What is wrong with positioning in advance? O_o I mean sure in DnD session usualy everyone wants to be in middle of the action, since nobody wants to miss opourtunity to steal their few seconds on spotlight ... and you can hardly intervene with dialogue, when you are hiding in shadows 20m away preparing your poisoned arrow.
But in general ... Positioning and preparing for bad things that can (and will, since we are going to start them) happen seems totally in line with story, and roleplay to me. O_o
Because that works good when you are replaying the game and know where the danger is. Or if there is a big DANGER sign. If you are just approaching a nice house of an old lady you don't know that you have first to sneak inside, take high grounds and then go talking If you are entering a hug lair you don't know that in that particular room you must spread and go in sneak in particular direction because there is a hug in stealth If you are running with explosives to help free people trapped with poison you don't know that you first must remove some neutral npcs and then position companions in sneak
I doubt that when you was playing that game first time you was 100% moving in stealth and with your group split around and taking positions around any npc you met
