pogre said:
Interesting - I too struggle with a game that is running a little heavy on the silly side right now. What was your old group's problem? Constant jokes? Non-game chatter? Why did you decide it could not be fixed?
Sorry to hijack, Sigdel. Let me try to answer these questions. I posted a great deal on the subject when it happened, but I am not having luck finding it through the site search, so I will summarize the relevent info.
One of my players came to D&D via World of Darkness and was thus very heavy into dark, angsty, deep-immersion role-playing. This really aggravated one of my other players. The resulting frustration caused him to do all sorts of silly things in character. The player cast continual flame on his gauntlets. Every time a battle began, he called out the "daily special" of menu items. Not out of the above-mentioned frustration, but just out of his immaturity, he also programmed obscenities into everyone at the table's cell phones , called "NOT IT!" every time I asked a question and his goal was to beat any monster or NPC I could throw at him. He wanted to "win" and caused other PC deaths through this. This style of play quickly caught on through all of the males under 21 at the table (there were 3). He would constantly argue rules and, if I made a mistake, would make fun of it for weeks. He called every BBEG a p***y (sorry, his word) and constantly ridiculed all NPC's. He always rooted for the deaths of other PC's and thought that when a PC died, that PC should be dead, gone and never brought back to life. Then, his PC died and he blamed me for not having his deity intervene (he was a 1st level Paladin of Heironeous, who was killed by a Priest of Orcus in a Desecrated temple of Cuthbert, re-dedicated to Orcus, with a Candle of Defiling burning on the altar). He stayed bitter about that for the rest of the time he was in the game. He also convinced the group, myself included, to oust the World of Darkness player or he was going to quit (ironically, this is the player who invited him to the game). To make things worse, these two players were the leaders at the table.
It got so bad that I had to take a break. I was not sure if I wanted to DM anymore, but decided that I wanted to DM, but not have to constantly monitor behavior and enforce discipline. I am a teacher and don't want my game to be like my job. Thus, I asked the under 21 players (3 males and a female) if they would leave the game. I re-invited the ousted player (in hindsight, a mistake) and planned to restart. then, I started getting calls from my players, begging for me to readmit the immature player. Again, ironically the player he convinced everyone to kick out of the game was his strongest defender. So, I allowed him back in.
I also posted online to find more players and a local gamer responded. He then brought another friend to the game. They immediately took leadership roles at the table, which upset the silly player (who was undisputed party leader at this point) and he quit. Since then, I have added two more players from the same group as the other two new players. This once again caused a shift in style and table leadership, since the former WoD player had originally been one of the party leaders previously and now the new players were not just blindly doing what he said (which all of my other players had previously done: whenever the silly player or WoD player spoke, they listened). So, last week that player quit the game.
My game is a high fantasy Greyhawk game in the "old school" style. However, the level of silliness I had was not acceptable. I had to realize that I am at the table to have fun too, not just entertain. I stood up for that idea and took back my game. Now the player who just quit cited as a reason for quitting that "realism" had gone out the window. He complained that when a PC got wet, we did not role-play replacing the bow string, or sharpening blades after a battle, haggling over prices when purchasing items, or keeping track of food and supplies. This is a player who enjoyed role-playing shopping trips, hunting (we spent, IIRC, almost an entire session role-playing hunting for small game once), etc. I didn't feel that a high-fantasy classic feel game was the place for that minutiae (while it had a place in a setting like Midnight, for example). I was sick of role-playing little interactions one-on-one with a player away from the table while the other players sat in front of the TV or chatted for 30 minutes to an hour of game time. These interactions took away from everyone else's game time, but this player, and the silly one, wanted that type of interaction in a session.
So, I think my only choice was to start over AND inject some fresh blood into the game through new players. I did not choose to restart the game until I found the new player, because I knew that things would degenerate again if I did not find some new ideas and style through (a) new player(s).
Okay, hijack over.
DM
and others - try the new group for 3 weeks, if it works out play both or drop the old one. Don't burn your bridges too fast. If you do find you want to do both I'd suggest to the old group a different day, if they're still keen to play & have you GM I expect they'll adapt. 
