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So I'm having a bit of an issue. Rowdy players. We're a very jokey group, fun antics and such. But it becomes a bit hard to get them to focus. While they all clearly want to play the game, it just makes it hard to get things done. We are by far the slowest moving group I have ever played with, and I'm at my wits end as to what to do.
My project group at university had this problem where we'd start chatting to a degree where we weren't getting any work done. We solved this to some degree by buying a bell that someone would ring to make us snap out of it and refocus when the chatting went too far.
If I understand you right, the problem you're experiencing is exactly that - chatting rather than getting on with the game. Maybe a bell would help you as well. (And if you don't want to buy one... I'm sure there's an app for that)
Are they being jokey in-character or out-of-character? If it's in-character, then there's nothing you can't adjust to with NPC's and appropriate encounters, but if they're being distracted by out-of-character jokes, then it may not be a good idea to mess with the situation. If everyone's having fun, why worry about forward progress? One suggestion I might put forward is to try incorporating good fey and evil fey into your game. Fey have a long history in literature of being used for both light-hearted and very dark humor. One other reason I mention the Fey is because they tend to be chaotic and fast-paced, which appeals to people with short attention spans. I don't know enough about your group to say whether it'll work in your case, but providing them with something they want in-game may keep them from making it themselves out-of-game.
Really though, so long as everyone's having fun, actual "main-story" progress can be postponed.
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It's out of character. The problem being that there are times when one or two players are trying to move the story a long or do something and with the OOC stuff it becomes incredibly distracting.
In our most recent session, we had a six hour session. In that session, the party fought two monsters, in separate encounters, disabled three traps, and unlocked two doors. They moved from the basement floor of a house (Which they had already cleared), to the ground floor (which they had already cleared), to the top floor, disarmed one trap, tripped another, combat session with an ogre that took two rounds, conversation with a ghost, tripped another trap, and then had the fight with the big baddie, but still hasn't resolved the conflict.
I worry that I'm going to railroad my players if I make everything too obvious, but I had to change the final encounter (An evil man who sold the souls of his town's people to a devil in exchange for immortality), because they were never going to try to find and destroy the contract. It's a balancing act. There's a part of me that wants them to try and explore more fully the world I've developed and explore real growth with their characters. But then there's the part of me that feels I need to railroad them to get things done.
It's a delicate balancing act I know.
This may sound really really silly, but in my experience, silently clasping your hands at chin-level and staring at people with your eyes wide open is the fastest way to get their attention at the table. If 3 people (you plus the 2 interested in moving on) are doing it at the same time, no off-topic conversation can stand against you. Once they pause in their talking and look over at you or the other 2 players, you can get them back on track. There should already be a standing rule (written or unwritten) in every RP group that people don't talk over each other, so this is a much less confrontational way than trying to interrupt or shush them. Good luck!