All this talk of snowflakes and ponies has brought back memories of some of the more cataclysmic derailing i've had occur in games over the years. One game I played in years ago we had a rogue who was working as a bounty hunter/assassin. The party was unaware that he had "dead or alive" contracts on some of the NPCs. We were all set to interrogate a prisoner for information about the MacGuffin and out of the blue he stabs the NPC, killing him with a coup d'grace.
What's the DM's roll in games where there's intra-party conflict. The DM liked all the players, he approved all the characters. Should he have been a peace maker between the players? Should he write narrative feeding the assassination storyline? What do you think about intra-party conflict in general? Do you have it in your games? Do you enjoy it?
Personally, I love intra-party conflict, but you need to have the right group to be able to pull it off without people bringing it out of game too, and I'd say it's part of the GMs role to ensure they don't encourage it in the wrong group.
When recruiting for a game, one of the things on my list of player requirements is "Don't take it personally if another player's character acts against yours. It's all a part of the story, and we're here to work together on a story primarily. Whether or not your character succeeds in what they want to do shouldn't matter. If it does, you're probably joining the wrong game and should back out now."
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I think a good GM can spot bad intra-party conflict moments brewing or happening and stop them. However, I don't think it should solely fall on the GMs shoulders to prevent it either. The players have some responsibility to the game as well.
Intra-party conflict in my games tends to be in character arguments about how to proceed in the game. We have a lot of fun having these discussions and it can lead to some excellent role-play. We tend to figure out ways to avoid PVP if possible because for us it is disruptive to our play-style. For "take that" style gaming we will look to other TTRPG systems or boardgames.
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One game I played in years ago we had a rogue who was working as a bounty hunter/assassin. The party was unaware that he had "dead or alive" contracts on some of the NPCs. We were all set to interrogate a prisoner for information about the MacGuffin and out of the blue he stabs the NPC, killing him with a coup d'grace.
If the contract was actually 'dead or alive', then his actions make no sense, and the player was simply acting dickish.
Even if he could argue that the prisoner was too dangerous to keep confined, too likely to escape, or that he'd be easier to smuggle back as a corpse, there's no reason to strike him right in the middle of his allies questioning him about the campaign objective.
I don't see the GM as being at fault in such a situation. Allowing a player to be a bounty hunter, with a warrant for some of the campaign's antagonists, or suggesting such a thing to a player, is actually a means to give them more of a reason to work together, not less.
It's up to the player to create a PC with objectives that work well with others. Or if the player is given a PC with a pregen objective, it's the player's responsibility to interpret that objective in a way that doesn't result in conflict.