What should you do with Problem Players? /u/Hot-Theory-8888 DnD: Roll for Initiative!

So this might be a little long-winded, but any advice would be appreciated. I have a group of 7 that I’m currently running through Curse of Strahd and I started the party off with the Death House mini adventure to get the party up to level 3 since all of my players are relatively new to D&D, for the most part everything went smoothly as 5 of my players were consistently invested in what was happening, but 2 of my players both had two seperate instances each where they either made the rest of the party incredibly uncomfortable or pissed everyone off.

The first problem players is the classic “that’s what my character would do” problem maker, he started off by making a joke character despite me telling everyone explicitly that I’m running a Gothic horror campaign and that Id like your characters to relativly match the setting, now I wouldn’t have minded until he took it too far, he named his character Demon Fucker backwards which I didn’t think was funny considering everyone else made a serious character, and then the problem arose when just getting to the Death House and speaking to Rose and Thorn ( a 10 and 7 year old brother and sister) the party could tell something was off with the children and debated whether the children were ghosts, monsters, or even demons, which is when my first problem player made a “joke” essentially eluding to pedophilia to which my entire table, a group of friends of 10 years or so went completely silent in shock that someone would think that’s funny or a joke ( I should also add that one of my players and I have kids), this alone left me feeling like we should no longer have him at the table again, on top of this he also made several comments that his entire goal was to ruin the prep that I did in my spare time throughout the past two weeks. Now I know that as a DM some of your prep goes to waste or the party doesn’t go along with what you had planned just by the nature of the game, but when a players goal is not based off of an in-game circumstance and instead is only oriented to ruin the prep itself just because, I feel like it just comes off as incredibly rude and that your goal is to simply waste the DM’s time.

My other problem players is a different story, he simply failed to pay attention or even interact with anyone or anything in almost the entirety of our 4 hour session, to the point that this guy brought down a TV from his bedroom and put on a football game in the corner of the room. ( I run my game at a buddies house and the problem player is his roommate). This alone pissed off everyone at the table and another round of silence came over everyone as we all glared at him irritatedly. Then because of him not paying attention one of my invested players told him that he’s obviously not paying attention, to which he responded by starting a heated argument with my good player insisting that he was paying attention eventually saying “Oh yeah if I wasn’t paying attention than how do I know we’re currently on the 3rd floor” to which my good player retorted ” That’s super funny cause we’re in the attic actually” which is when the argument finally died down.

Again, sorry to be very long-winded in my explanation, but essentially, what I’m asking is, should I remove the two problem players from the group? Should I try to talk to them first? I don’t want my players who are invested in the campaign to be uncomfortable or irritated considering their doing nothing wrong, and I’ve never had players like these two

So this might be a little long-winded, but any advice would be appreciated. I have a group of 7 that I’m currently running through Curse of Strahd and I started the party off with the Death House mini adventure to get the party up to level 3 since all of my players are relatively new to D&D, for the most part everything went smoothly as 5 of my players were consistently invested in what was happening, but 2 of my players both had two seperate instances each where they either made the rest of the party incredibly uncomfortable or pissed everyone off.

The first problem players is the classic “that’s what my character would do” problem maker, he started off by making a joke character despite me telling everyone explicitly that I’m running a Gothic horror campaign and that Id like your characters to relativly match the setting, now I wouldn’t have minded until he took it too far, he named his character Demon Fucker backwards which I didn’t think was funny considering everyone else made a serious character, and then the problem arose when just getting to the Death House and speaking to Rose and Thorn ( a 10 and 7 year old brother and sister) the party could tell something was off with the children and debated whether the children were ghosts, monsters, or even demons, which is when my first problem player made a “joke” essentially eluding to pedophilia to which my entire table, a group of friends of 10 years or so went completely silent in shock that someone would think that’s funny or a joke ( I should also add that one of my players and I have kids), this alone left me feeling like we should no longer have him at the table again, on top of this he also made several comments that his entire goal was to ruin the prep that I did in my spare time throughout the past two weeks. Now I know that as a DM some of your prep goes to waste or the party doesn’t go along with what you had planned just by the nature of the game, but when a players goal is not based off of an in-game circumstance and instead is only oriented to ruin the prep itself just because, I feel like it just comes off as incredibly rude and that your goal is to simply waste the DM’s time.

My other problem players is a different story, he simply failed to pay attention or even interact with anyone or anything in almost the entirety of our 4 hour session, to the point that this guy brought down a TV from his bedroom and put on a football game in the corner of the room. ( I run my game at a buddies house and the problem player is his roommate). This alone pissed off everyone at the table and another round of silence came over everyone as we all glared at him irritatedly. Then because of him not paying attention one of my invested players told him that he’s obviously not paying attention, to which he responded by starting a heated argument with my good player insisting that he was paying attention eventually saying “Oh yeah if I wasn’t paying attention than how do I know we’re currently on the 3rd floor” to which my good player retorted ” That’s super funny cause we’re in the attic actually” which is when the argument finally died down.

Again, sorry to be very long-winded in my explanation, but essentially, what I’m asking is, should I remove the two problem players from the group? Should I try to talk to them first? I don’t want my players who are invested in the campaign to be uncomfortable or irritated considering their doing nothing wrong, and I’ve never had players like these two