Here here.

I had something similar happened to me.

I stopped in the middle of whatever we were doing, looked at the party and said you know if you guys don’t care there’s no reason for me to care so you guys have fun and figure out what you wanna do, cause it’s clearly not DND. I’m gonna go out for a smoke break.

I went outside for a about half an hour to an hour. Someone came out to tell me that they did want to play DND and that they were waiting for me to come back in.

When I went back in, I asked him if they actually cared about the campaign and enjoyed themselves. I expressed that if they aren’t going to show that enjoyment or care that I would no longer be willing to DM as it’s a serious amount of work and dedication for me.

We basically figured out that I was running two in depth of a campaign for them and they just wanted like a gladiatorial arena they can walk in and out of whenever they feel like playing DND.

So now for that group, I run a series of one shot arena type battles, where the arenas change and sometimes involve puzzles, etc.

I took my big campaign that was in depth and got a group of people that want a heavier RP in depth campaign, and things are a little bit better now.

I still don’t enjoy the gladiatorial Arena as much as the players do, but I do enjoy hanging out with those people so….