Quick preface, running a witcher style game, where theres a lot of moral grey areas and moral dilemas to be discussed by the group.
One of these moral arguments is threatening to cause the group to break into two, and potentially lead to some PvP aswell. Idm if the party breaks, players on one side have said they've got back ups ready and know the risks. I worry this arguing, and if it does turn to PvP. May cause the players to fall out and stop the campaign. I wont allow anyone to die, but having an argument about it, losing and then going against the party and causing pvp could be problematic, but on the other hand if I say no Im sort of forcing the PC to do something they dont want to.
How can I keep the fighting solely in game, and prevent any anger or frustration spilling into actual arguments?
Simply put, you most likely can't at this point. If the party has gone to the point of secession, *they, not you*, have to bring it back in line.
Sure, you can attempt to influence the situation by giving them a common goal to work towards or a common threat that they easily agree needs some dynamic conflict resolution application. You could do the "talk to your players" thing that suggests the idea of convincing your players to adhere to the social contract, but you already knew to do that.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I disagree. I think you have a shot at stopping this from getting personal if you hit the pause button in the moment. "Hey guys, don't forget we're playing a game. Characters can get angry, that's fine, but keep it in the game. We all want to have fun, so let's find a way to work it out."
I also suggest that, if you want to keep your current group, consider tailoring your adventure more toward their temperaments. Maybe grey morality isn't the right style for this collection of players. OR perhaps just massage the plot such that they can find another solution and move past this argument. If the majority of your players aren't responding the way you expected, some of that is on you to adjust and make sure everyone at the table is having a fair shot at fun.
Finally, if a grey morality game is what you want to run and you aren't willing to adjust, maybe the players who aren't enjoying it should find another campaign. D&D is not one-size-fits-all, and it's totally okay if the story you're telling doesn't jive with everyone. It's not a reflection on you at all, it simply comes down to personal tastes.
How can I keep the fighting solely in game, and prevent any anger or frustration spilling into actual arguments?
I don't think that is your responsibility.
Unless the players are young teenagers, then they should be adult-enough to realise that IC issues should not become OOC issues.
The best thing would just to be light-hearted outside of the game after each session so that players can see that the conflict was only IC.
BTW, if they do it to each other, then you should definitely let PCs die - otherwise the players will feel that they can have their characters do anything without any real risk.
I'd second theoryofbagels to remind them its a game, and they should step back before they choose to make their characters do anything hasty.
If they do go through with it and split the party. I'd make it clear you're not willing to DM two games, and you're also not going to sit there and be the referee for a PvP session, so they need to figure out which branch the players -- not the characters -- want to take. Hopefully people are mature enough that they can carry on after being on the losing side of that discussion. But if not, well, that's a different kind of problem that was going to manifest one way or another eventually.
Tell people if they really feel that strongly that their character just needs to leave, they are free to do so, and then find a way to integrate the new characters. And, while I often like to have retired characters return as a thorn in the party's side, I'd say not to do that here, since it seems there's bad blood. I'd just let them leave, never to be heard from again.
The best thing you can do as a DM: Remove, mitigate, or superseded the underlying issue that is causing the party drama.
1. Remove - Solve the problem for the players, but in a manner that leaves both sides feeling like no one really won (or both sides feeling like they won, if you can pull it off, but that is harder). This is a hard option to take. If done right, it feels like events continued to transpire while the party dithered in making their decision. More likely than not, however, it is going to feel very much like DM overreach. Hard to get that balance just right and in a way your party enjoys.
2. Mitigate - provide the party additional information that is tailored toward one of the factions changing their mind. It is not that hard to shift the balance of power in these kinds of fight - you just have to listen to what your party’s arguments are and give them new info that supports their arguments. This is probably the easiest option.
3. Superseded - Give the party something else to think about or otherwise remove them from the situation. Perhaps a major event puts their fight into perspective or forced them to immediately shift their focus. Perhaps in pursuing their objectives, they find themselves trapped and unable to get back to the source of the drama. This is the most drastic option, since it forces you to change your plans or possibly the course of the entire campaign (if the drama is bad enough/too entwined with the current campaign plan).
Yes, all three of these options remove player agency, which is generally less than ideal. But it is better to remove the source of the drama if the alternative is the entire campaign imploding.
While there are some great suggestions put forward here, they all hinge on the notion that the players volunteer to pull back from the conflict and stick with the social contract of coming together to have fun playing a game.
I might suggest that, as DMs, we control how we (and by proxy, the game world and the creatures in it) react to PC input and development in our game. Controlling inter-PC conflict is a function of the players, which makes this a problem player (or problem players) issue. By my estimation, problem players are not something to be handled in game. If a player makes a character that cannot function as part of the group, for whatever reason, it's the players responsibility to fix that. Not the DM. This absolutly reeks of: "That's what my character would do."
Attempting in-game shennanigans to solve an inter-personal, out of game conflict may serve to exascerbate the root problem and could potentially provide the perspective that you are siding with one group or the other. I only know of two methods for conflict resolution: Diplomacy and a more dynamic and aggressive response that isn't condoned by a large majority of the population with good reason. If talking to your players (not handling in-game decisions for them) cannot solve this, I would highly suggest that you stop DMing for this group, or kick the offending player/players. They still get a choice, they still have player agency.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Quick preface, running a witcher style game, where theres a lot of moral grey areas and moral dilemas to be discussed by the group.
One of these moral arguments is threatening to cause the group to break into two, and potentially lead to some PvP aswell. Idm if the party breaks, players on one side have said they've got back ups ready and know the risks. I worry this arguing, and if it does turn to PvP. May cause the players to fall out and stop the campaign. I wont allow anyone to die, but having an argument about it, losing and then going against the party and causing pvp could be problematic, but on the other hand if I say no Im sort of forcing the PC to do something they dont want to.
How can I keep the fighting solely in game, and prevent any anger or frustration spilling into actual arguments?
Cheers!
Sometimes the best option is to let the players work it out. I remember one situation with my LG cleric where the other PCs wanted to execute an already arrested villain. This of course ran contrary to everything my PC stood for and thus they could not allow it to transpire. This put my PC at odds with the entire party, caused frustration among the players who just wanted to kill the bad guy and move on to the next, and almost caused a PvP fight.
I remained solution-oriented and spoke to the players about my PCs position mid-session and asked them to trust me in finding an agreeable solution in-game. The players granted this request and I allowed myself to be a bit flexible with my PC's moral compass, where the cleric removed their weapons and armor and fought to the death in unarmed combat, where the bad guy could be allowed to flee if they killed my PC. It wasn't ideal for me as it sent the message that taking prisoners was going to lead to dealing with prisoners, but it allowed the problem to be resolved and the game to move forward.
I think that the only way you can stop this from getting personal is to say that this is all role playing and they have to represent there characters personalities and not there own. If it is beyond the point of no return and they are getting personal it might work to just play a one off and let them reconnect and bring back the old energy.
While the solution may be entirely on the players, as DM we have a distinct role in these kinds of conflicts. I'd echo everyone's comments about taking an out of game moment and broach the topic, starting with a reminder that everyone came together to play a game. Inter-character conflict can be fun and add some color to the game, but inter-player conflict should be resolved quickly. No one wants to D&D angry
I would throw a catastrophe at them out of nowhere. Something of epic proportions that they all have to rally and jump at immediately. Make it long and intriguing, completely removing them from the location, and the storyline of their current argument. And based on what you are saying I would make the story arch of this catastrophe without any moral grey areas. without knowing more about the issues, the PCs, and the current campaign setting, its is hard to offer a specific idea.
Maybe a portal opens up under the party and they are now on some different plain of existences summoned there by the final spell of a dying powerful entity. As they arrive the entity tells them with its dying breath of some great evil that must be defeated, or sends them on a quest, or you could have the entity die without getting the full story out, now they have to figure our where they are, why they are there and how to get back. which every option I would tailor the storyline in such a way that they are all forced to work together (subtly of course).
You already have lots of good suggestions, so I'll just add a bit of a side-note:
Make it clear to your players that DnD was not designed for PvP and that you won't allow for PvP simply based on the fact that it breaks the game.
PC classes are balanced such that they can work together to fight Monster statblocks, traps, and social encounters. They are not balanced for fighting each other. I would just say the game has no real support for PvP so you also can't allow it to happen.
Have a talk with the players at the next session and discussion about PVP because to you it looks like some players are going to kill other players. Ask them if they can handle PVP and rolling up a new character? If they say no, then tell them they are going to have to figure their crap and get them working together as a team. If the players behavior are causing you to stress tell them you aren't liking it and its making DM'ing not fun as well.
Yeah, I'm not sure what I can add to what's been said so this might be a lot of echoes:
Your table, your vibe. If you're not cool with players rolling initiative so their characters can throw down, that's something you can stop. If they don't like it, they can DM.
If players are already talking about rolling new characters because they're committed to the fight, that might be a sign that your party is already down this road. It's okay if that's what they want but if you're hoping to run a game with a different vibe, it's up to you to say so. Me? I'd nip it in the bud. I have a hard and fast rule: No party members roll attacks on other party members. Ever.
As for the IC vs OOC thing.. and this is a big one:
"It's just a game" is often used at gaming tables to forward painful and hurtful ideas that can drive people out of a game. "Don't take it so seriously" is an easy thing for someone who hasn't experienced trauma to throw out there when someone else is very uncomfortable with the direction of the story/ conversation/ role play. For me, and I think we all strive for this on some level, I want an inclusive table and that means being mindful of things that others have experienced and I have not. A Character might be okay with killing every member of X race, but the way the RP works, or the "in character moral justification" may remind another player too much of real world events or real world traumas. A good moral conflict can make for interesting story telling but at the same time we have a responsibility to listen to ALL of our players and understand WHY some things are just really hard to "just keep it in game".
And of course there are some things that we should be mindful of as "not really okay in any context". The player who claims that his character is cool with the kinds of things that are very against the TOS of DDB to talk about is one that might need a reminder that "it's just in game" might not be enough for the others at the table. And it's okay to say "that's just not an option here" out of respect for those other players.
People often want D&D to be something that it's not. They want to play a character who works only for themselves, or they want to play an edgy loner, or they want to be the villain.
Unless specifically tailored to those characters in a way that goes outside traditional expectations of D&D, then characters who don't want to work as a party generally just wreck the game. Games where characters care about each other and will go to great lengths to support and protect party members are just better games than 4 CN mercenaries wandering aimlessly.
For the DM though: I suspect that this is a problem that you've caused, unintentionally, by trying to use "moral grayness" to make the world feel gritty. Although there is some good to come from that, were boundaries and intentions well shown enough that the players were even likely to come to the same conclusions? Or are there so many different elements at play that not even the PCs know who the good guys and bad guys are? You need Evil bad guys in a D&D game. Moral grayness is great in novels; it sucks in games. In a novel, the reveal that the hero's best friend was betraying them all along is cool, or that the hero was previously a murderer etc. is fine. In a game of D&D, if I'm playing a bog-standard Neutral Good character and another PC reveals that they were previously hunted down after they murdered their spouse? My PC is going to *have to* bring them to justice, or at the very least refuse to work with them.
Some may disagree with this approach, but in session zero, I tell my players that they are all on a mission together and reveal what the mission is (actually I give them a choice of a bunch of campaign styles/ideas/missions and they choose the one they like best): they then have to make characters who would be on that mission (for whatever reason they like). This makes the entire campaign a cohesive story, and the characters all want to work together. It's never to late to run Session 0.5 and ask the players that, for the sake of the game, they must have characters capable of working together. If they don't, they can retire their old characters and start over.
If things are getting tense at my table I step in and deal with it. D&D is about having fun and it's the DMs job to address player behaviour that is causing things to not be fun for other players.
Morally grey = moral conflict = conflict
It could be that your table is not mature enough to handle this and you should move to a more morally clear sort of story. Or ditch the problem players and set up a new group if you really want to explore this stuff.
Player characters in the game can have conflict and resolve them in many ways, but player conflicts at the table shouldn't exist. I'd remind them that this is a game and the goal is to have fun, not have grudges and hurt feelings. I would talk to them to not let this drag any longer.
I also usually tell my players during session 0 that i don't tolerate PvP. If any situation pushes a PC to turn against the party and attack, it immediately stop being a friendly party member and instead become a hostile NPC under the DM's control. The player that feels it should be the course for his or her character must let it go and can make a new character and see the party deal with the opposing NPC now acting as a protagonist.
That NPC might flee if not killed and could even return as a reccurring villain. Or never be heard of again. Usually other party members don't care about his fate, sometimes caring more about his magic items ! ☺
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Hi guys,
Quick preface, running a witcher style game, where theres a lot of moral grey areas and moral dilemas to be discussed by the group.
One of these moral arguments is threatening to cause the group to break into two, and potentially lead to some PvP aswell. Idm if the party breaks, players on one side have said they've got back ups ready and know the risks. I worry this arguing, and if it does turn to PvP. May cause the players to fall out and stop the campaign. I wont allow anyone to die, but having an argument about it, losing and then going against the party and causing pvp could be problematic, but on the other hand if I say no Im sort of forcing the PC to do something they dont want to.
How can I keep the fighting solely in game, and prevent any anger or frustration spilling into actual arguments?
Cheers!
Simply put, you most likely can't at this point. If the party has gone to the point of secession, *they, not you*, have to bring it back in line.
Sure, you can attempt to influence the situation by giving them a common goal to work towards or a common threat that they easily agree needs some dynamic conflict resolution application. You could do the "talk to your players" thing that suggests the idea of convincing your players to adhere to the social contract, but you already knew to do that.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I disagree. I think you have a shot at stopping this from getting personal if you hit the pause button in the moment. "Hey guys, don't forget we're playing a game. Characters can get angry, that's fine, but keep it in the game. We all want to have fun, so let's find a way to work it out."
I also suggest that, if you want to keep your current group, consider tailoring your adventure more toward their temperaments. Maybe grey morality isn't the right style for this collection of players. OR perhaps just massage the plot such that they can find another solution and move past this argument. If the majority of your players aren't responding the way you expected, some of that is on you to adjust and make sure everyone at the table is having a fair shot at fun.
Finally, if a grey morality game is what you want to run and you aren't willing to adjust, maybe the players who aren't enjoying it should find another campaign. D&D is not one-size-fits-all, and it's totally okay if the story you're telling doesn't jive with everyone. It's not a reflection on you at all, it simply comes down to personal tastes.
I don't think that is your responsibility.
Unless the players are young teenagers, then they should be adult-enough to realise that IC issues should not become OOC issues.
The best thing would just to be light-hearted outside of the game after each session so that players can see that the conflict was only IC.
BTW, if they do it to each other, then you should definitely let PCs die - otherwise the players will feel that they can have their characters do anything without any real risk.
I'd second theoryofbagels to remind them its a game, and they should step back before they choose to make their characters do anything hasty.
If they do go through with it and split the party. I'd make it clear you're not willing to DM two games, and you're also not going to sit there and be the referee for a PvP session, so they need to figure out which branch the players -- not the characters -- want to take. Hopefully people are mature enough that they can carry on after being on the losing side of that discussion. But if not, well, that's a different kind of problem that was going to manifest one way or another eventually.
Tell people if they really feel that strongly that their character just needs to leave, they are free to do so, and then find a way to integrate the new characters. And, while I often like to have retired characters return as a thorn in the party's side, I'd say not to do that here, since it seems there's bad blood. I'd just let them leave, never to be heard from again.
The best thing you can do as a DM: Remove, mitigate, or superseded the underlying issue that is causing the party drama.
1. Remove - Solve the problem for the players, but in a manner that leaves both sides feeling like no one really won (or both sides feeling like they won, if you can pull it off, but that is harder). This is a hard option to take. If done right, it feels like events continued to transpire while the party dithered in making their decision. More likely than not, however, it is going to feel very much like DM overreach. Hard to get that balance just right and in a way your party enjoys.
2. Mitigate - provide the party additional information that is tailored toward one of the factions changing their mind. It is not that hard to shift the balance of power in these kinds of fight - you just have to listen to what your party’s arguments are and give them new info that supports their arguments. This is probably the easiest option.
3. Superseded - Give the party something else to think about or otherwise remove them from the situation. Perhaps a major event puts their fight into perspective or forced them to immediately shift their focus. Perhaps in pursuing their objectives, they find themselves trapped and unable to get back to the source of the drama. This is the most drastic option, since it forces you to change your plans or possibly the course of the entire campaign (if the drama is bad enough/too entwined with the current campaign plan).
Yes, all three of these options remove player agency, which is generally less than ideal. But it is better to remove the source of the drama if the alternative is the entire campaign imploding.
While there are some great suggestions put forward here, they all hinge on the notion that the players volunteer to pull back from the conflict and stick with the social contract of coming together to have fun playing a game.
I might suggest that, as DMs, we control how we (and by proxy, the game world and the creatures in it) react to PC input and development in our game. Controlling inter-PC conflict is a function of the players, which makes this a problem player (or problem players) issue. By my estimation, problem players are not something to be handled in game. If a player makes a character that cannot function as part of the group, for whatever reason, it's the players responsibility to fix that. Not the DM. This absolutly reeks of: "That's what my character would do."
Attempting in-game shennanigans to solve an inter-personal, out of game conflict may serve to exascerbate the root problem and could potentially provide the perspective that you are siding with one group or the other. I only know of two methods for conflict resolution: Diplomacy and a more dynamic and aggressive response that isn't condoned by a large majority of the population with good reason. If talking to your players (not handling in-game decisions for them) cannot solve this, I would highly suggest that you stop DMing for this group, or kick the offending player/players. They still get a choice, they still have player agency.
No D&D is better than bad D&D.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Sometimes the best option is to let the players work it out. I remember one situation with my LG cleric where the other PCs wanted to execute an already arrested villain. This of course ran contrary to everything my PC stood for and thus they could not allow it to transpire. This put my PC at odds with the entire party, caused frustration among the players who just wanted to kill the bad guy and move on to the next, and almost caused a PvP fight.
I remained solution-oriented and spoke to the players about my PCs position mid-session and asked them to trust me in finding an agreeable solution in-game. The players granted this request and I allowed myself to be a bit flexible with my PC's moral compass, where the cleric removed their weapons and armor and fought to the death in unarmed combat, where the bad guy could be allowed to flee if they killed my PC. It wasn't ideal for me as it sent the message that taking prisoners was going to lead to dealing with prisoners, but it allowed the problem to be resolved and the game to move forward.
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I think that the only way you can stop this from getting personal is to say that this is all role playing and they have to represent there characters personalities and not there own. If it is beyond the point of no return and they are getting personal it might work to just play a one off and let them reconnect and bring back the old energy.
While the solution may be entirely on the players, as DM we have a distinct role in these kinds of conflicts. I'd echo everyone's comments about taking an out of game moment and broach the topic, starting with a reminder that everyone came together to play a game. Inter-character conflict can be fun and add some color to the game, but inter-player conflict should be resolved quickly. No one wants to D&D angry
I would throw a catastrophe at them out of nowhere. Something of epic proportions that they all have to rally and jump at immediately. Make it long and intriguing, completely removing them from the location, and the storyline of their current argument. And based on what you are saying I would make the story arch of this catastrophe without any moral grey areas. without knowing more about the issues, the PCs, and the current campaign setting, its is hard to offer a specific idea.
Maybe a portal opens up under the party and they are now on some different plain of existences summoned there by the final spell of a dying powerful entity. As they arrive the entity tells them with its dying breath of some great evil that must be defeated, or sends them on a quest, or you could have the entity die without getting the full story out, now they have to figure our where they are, why they are there and how to get back. which every option I would tailor the storyline in such a way that they are all forced to work together (subtly of course).
You already have lots of good suggestions, so I'll just add a bit of a side-note:
Make it clear to your players that DnD was not designed for PvP and that you won't allow for PvP simply based on the fact that it breaks the game.
PC classes are balanced such that they can work together to fight Monster statblocks, traps, and social encounters. They are not balanced for fighting each other. I would just say the game has no real support for PvP so you also can't allow it to happen.
Have a talk with the players at the next session and discussion about PVP because to you it looks like some players are going to kill other players. Ask them if they can handle PVP and rolling up a new character? If they say no, then tell them they are going to have to figure their crap and get them working together as a team. If the players behavior are causing you to stress tell them you aren't liking it and its making DM'ing not fun as well.
Yeah, I'm not sure what I can add to what's been said so this might be a lot of echoes:
Your table, your vibe. If you're not cool with players rolling initiative so their characters can throw down, that's something you can stop. If they don't like it, they can DM.
If players are already talking about rolling new characters because they're committed to the fight, that might be a sign that your party is already down this road. It's okay if that's what they want but if you're hoping to run a game with a different vibe, it's up to you to say so. Me? I'd nip it in the bud. I have a hard and fast rule: No party members roll attacks on other party members. Ever.
As for the IC vs OOC thing.. and this is a big one:
"It's just a game" is often used at gaming tables to forward painful and hurtful ideas that can drive people out of a game. "Don't take it so seriously" is an easy thing for someone who hasn't experienced trauma to throw out there when someone else is very uncomfortable with the direction of the story/ conversation/ role play. For me, and I think we all strive for this on some level, I want an inclusive table and that means being mindful of things that others have experienced and I have not. A Character might be okay with killing every member of X race, but the way the RP works, or the "in character moral justification" may remind another player too much of real world events or real world traumas. A good moral conflict can make for interesting story telling but at the same time we have a responsibility to listen to ALL of our players and understand WHY some things are just really hard to "just keep it in game".
And of course there are some things that we should be mindful of as "not really okay in any context". The player who claims that his character is cool with the kinds of things that are very against the TOS of DDB to talk about is one that might need a reminder that "it's just in game" might not be enough for the others at the table. And it's okay to say "that's just not an option here" out of respect for those other players.
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People often want D&D to be something that it's not. They want to play a character who works only for themselves, or they want to play an edgy loner, or they want to be the villain.
Unless specifically tailored to those characters in a way that goes outside traditional expectations of D&D, then characters who don't want to work as a party generally just wreck the game. Games where characters care about each other and will go to great lengths to support and protect party members are just better games than 4 CN mercenaries wandering aimlessly.
For the DM though: I suspect that this is a problem that you've caused, unintentionally, by trying to use "moral grayness" to make the world feel gritty. Although there is some good to come from that, were boundaries and intentions well shown enough that the players were even likely to come to the same conclusions? Or are there so many different elements at play that not even the PCs know who the good guys and bad guys are? You need Evil bad guys in a D&D game. Moral grayness is great in novels; it sucks in games. In a novel, the reveal that the hero's best friend was betraying them all along is cool, or that the hero was previously a murderer etc. is fine. In a game of D&D, if I'm playing a bog-standard Neutral Good character and another PC reveals that they were previously hunted down after they murdered their spouse? My PC is going to *have to* bring them to justice, or at the very least refuse to work with them.
Some may disagree with this approach, but in session zero, I tell my players that they are all on a mission together and reveal what the mission is (actually I give them a choice of a bunch of campaign styles/ideas/missions and they choose the one they like best): they then have to make characters who would be on that mission (for whatever reason they like). This makes the entire campaign a cohesive story, and the characters all want to work together. It's never to late to run Session 0.5 and ask the players that, for the sake of the game, they must have characters capable of working together. If they don't, they can retire their old characters and start over.
If things are getting tense at my table I step in and deal with it. D&D is about having fun and it's the DMs job to address player behaviour that is causing things to not be fun for other players.
Morally grey = moral conflict = conflict
It could be that your table is not mature enough to handle this and you should move to a more morally clear sort of story. Or ditch the problem players and set up a new group if you really want to explore this stuff.
Player characters in the game can have conflict and resolve them in many ways, but player conflicts at the table shouldn't exist. I'd remind them that this is a game and the goal is to have fun, not have grudges and hurt feelings. I would talk to them to not let this drag any longer.
I also usually tell my players during session 0 that i don't tolerate PvP. If any situation pushes a PC to turn against the party and attack, it immediately stop being a friendly party member and instead become a hostile NPC under the DM's control. The player that feels it should be the course for his or her character must let it go and can make a new character and see the party deal with the opposing NPC now acting as a protagonist.
That NPC might flee if not killed and could even return as a reccurring villain. Or never be heard of again. Usually other party members don't care about his fate, sometimes caring more about his magic items ! ☺