Dealing with a Party Split? (LMoP Spoilers)

[Dylnuge]

I'm DMing Lost Mine of Phandelver for a pretty new group of players (only one of the five has played any TTRPGs before). If relevant, it's also my second time ever DMing, and my first time doing anything with 5e (my other DMing was in Pathfinder, and I've played 3.5e a lot and 4e once). Also, it's in the thread title, but note that spoilers for parts of Lost Mine of Phandelver follow.

One of the players (who was playing the pregen rogue) tried to steal from another party member and it went poorly. They wound up fleeing the party and heading to the Sleeping Giant Inn, which was where the gang of Redbrands (thugs terrorizing the town) was holed up (their backstory included that they'd previously been a member of the gang, and that they'd been kicked out and the gang had tried to kill them). I'm not really sure why the player thought this would be a good idea, but it triggered a nice little encounter with four Redbrands, who they subsequently tried to flee from. I ran a small little chase segment, some die rolls went bad for the rogue (nat 20 trying to find them after they hid), and I had the guards capture him.

The rest of the party chose to go to the Sleeping Giant Inn themselves to try and find him, ran into the Redbrands, and killed them. End of session.

Everyone had a lot of fun with this chaos, but I don't want it to persist to the point where it stops being fun. I talked with the player a bit afterwards and reminded them that everyone is there to play and have fun, and that the party should mostly get along and not fight to the point where it stops being fun for people. Basically the standard "yeah, it's your character, but it's also your character" speech.

For the next session, what I have set up right now is that the rogue is kidnapped and being held in the slave pens of the Redbrand hideout (there's also a few other prisoners there). I'm assuming (hopefully correctly) that the party will choose to proceed on to the hideout and be rejoined together shortly. For the rogue, I've put him at low health. I'm thinking I'll let him try and escape and stealth around a bit to try and learn some things that could help the rest of the party. There's a couple questions I have though, since this is my first time running into this situation and I'm not totally clear what to do:


How do I handle XP? I gave the XP from the Redbrand encounter out evenly to the four non-kidnapped members of the party. Should I give the rogue opportunities to compensate for lost XP, or just make them being possibly slightly underleveled compared to the rest of the party a consequence of their actions?
Should I put the player in another room, or is it fine to keep them at the table? How much time should I give to them and their escape attempts? Should I just disallow that and make non-participation a consequence of their actions?
What should I do if the party decides (somewhat reasonably, I think) to not rescue the guy they barely know who stole from them? I'd planned to give them an additional reason to want to go to the hideout (telling them about a missing NPC) but how much should I railroad them, and if I do let them leave the rogue to his own devices, what should I do with the player?


I really appreciate any and all advice. The great news is the last session was uproarious and everyone is still talking about how incredible it was, but I'm worried about the long-term impacts.

[Contrast]

1 - I prefer to keep people even so my recommendation will be to hand out XP to everyone evenly but that approach isn't for everyone so *shrugs*

2 - Try to keep non-participation to a minimum. Which is related to...

3 - Don't wait until next session. Talk to your players now. Is the rogue player determined to stick to their character or are they happy to get a new one? If the rest of the party is going to go and do something else you need to know otherwise the rogue will sit around doing nothing next session unless you know what they're doing and can arrange for stuff. What do you do if the party goes there but understandably doesn't feel inclined to carry on adventuring with the rogue after he's been rescued? You need to know if they will welcome him back into the party or if the rogue should become an NPC and the rogue player should start next session with a new character rolled up and ready to go. Ideally you would have had this conversation at the end of last session so you could all discuss it together.

[Plantae]

1 - I prefer to keep people even so my recommendation will be to hand out XP to everyone evenly but that approach isn't for everyone so *shrugs*

2 - Try to keep non-participation to a minimum. Which is related to...

3 - Don't wait until next session. Talk to your players now. Is the rogue player determined to stick to their character or are they happy to get a new one? If the rest of the party is going to go and do something else you need to know otherwise the rogue will sit around doing nothing next session unless you know what they're doing and can arrange for stuff. What do you do if the party goes there but understandably doesn't feel inclined to carry on adventuring with the rogue after he's been rescued? You need to know if they will welcome him back into the party or if the rogue should become an NPC and the rogue player should start next session with a new character rolled up and ready to go. Ideally you would have had this conversation at the end of last session so you could all discuss it together.

I think all of the above is good advice. Regarding (1), I'd say there is never a reason to distribute XP unevenly unless you want to stoke resentment among your players.

If you want to avoid the issue of non-participation entirely, you can just allow the rogue to escape on his own and return to the Sleeping Giant Inn with any information he might have gleaned. He can even provide this information to the party as an apology for last session's theft. Preferrably you would resolve the rogue's escape without the other players present, so they're not sitting around while the rogue does his thing (maybe before the other players arrive for the session).