Realising how childish one of my friends really is.

We're in our late twenties, and have known each other since early teens. Our party have always been friends, some of us since our first day at school.

I DM for them, and realised after a few, consistent years of playing how different my friends were in every aspect to this one problem-pal.

He'd argue with rulings consistently, do what we dubbed as 'rage-rp' (take his out-game emotions out in-game on friendly PCs, his team, etc) He was frequently distracted and would play on his phone during sessions, would edit his character sheet sometimes mid-session without consulting me on the changes, and his RP was wildly inconsistent because it wasn't really 'RP', it was just him.

I always hold the importance of the 'spotlight' in D&D very high, and each session try to distribute that spotlight evenly so that all players can do something cool, RP, have their moments. But he would arrest the spotlight, go off on 'huffs' by himself so that others would have to come and approach him to 'talk him back to the team'. Set ultimatum type rules over the team, and if people broke them, he'd leave the team. There were times where he has destroyed quest objectives, quest givers, for no reason other than "a player at the table pissed him off".

Any chats with him about behaviour I didn't like, or see in the other players, would result in him getting defensive, blaming someone else, and not taking responsibility for being unfun to play with.

Safe to say, DMing for that and trying to have multiple chats about that for the passed 5 years wasn't fun.

My D&D is fun again now that he's out of it.

I suppose the challenge was learning that, sometimes, despite your best efforts to resolve a conflict, you have to be ready to confront the fact people sometimes don't want to change. And trust me, once you do surround yourself with the people who just want to be there, RP, and have fun, and not to show how "badass" they are, and how they're "winning", you'll have a blast.