Balancing a Game Session: Conversation vs Action

[muranternet]

I suppose the question was phrased wrong; not so much combat/noncombat, but sort of characters interacting versus "doing adventure stuff." As in, "Let's make fun of each others' ridiculous ideas and play out our personalities" versus "Time to grab this box of pencils and deliver it to the duke." I tend to run campaigns as a freeform, with a lot of open ended possibilities, so I don't mind so much personally when the plot stalls a bit for the sake of funny interactions, but I have been in groups as a player where a GM had "an adventure" prepared, and seemed to get annoyed if it looked like we weren't going to get through "an adventure" in the allotted time frame. Since GURPS tends to be more open and mutable than other systems, I have to assume that GURPS GMs tend to run a wider gamut in style as well.