You are correct that nerd cultire has evolved quite abit over the years. And it helps if we all use words that we understand have the same meaning.

A quik google shows me this. Mainstream: what's viewed by most people in a society as "normal". And its also how I know the term to be used.

And pardon me, but no dnd is nog evem remotely widely known enough to be mainstream. It is popular, yes. But not so popular that the majority of the population is a fan or plays it.

Let me reitterate what my (potential) problem is with bg 3 beeing a huge succes. Anything thats very popular tends to draw a large number of new fans.

Game of thrones is a very easy example of this. Prior to the series beeing aired it was about as niche as it gets. But once it came on television and became popular suddenly everyone was a fan. (Probably because of the large amounts of violence and nudity, but why it became popular is irrrlevant)

And that in itself is fine. More fans for something isent bad. But the old fans tend to want the television adaptation to stay true to the books. The stories written as they are were the reasons why they were fans in the first place. The new fans dont give a shit about the books because most havent even read them (and alot never will). They will however shut down arguments of people asking for the series to stay true to the books. For whatever reason.

And one of the results of it suddenly brcoming so popular is the dreaded season 8. Now everylne ive ever talked to hated it. But it derailed so heavily because it got so popular and the series caught up to writer and they decided to wing it, not wanting to slow down given its popularity.

And over time the new fans also tend to push out the older fans with stories of 'its not made for you' or 'we like it more this way' or 'find your own series' dispite the older fan beeing a fan before they were.

And I see that in more hobbies that I have by the day. I see tourist invading my hobby space, ruining it before moving on to the next thing like a swarm of locusts.

And dnd already has that thanks to critical role. But il explain it differently, maybe that way people understand my point.

You are a fan of football. And come across a group of people who also say they like football. They invite you to come join them. Great! You go there and everyone picks up the ball. Dribbles with the ball and dunks the ball in a net. 'Hey hold on! This isent football!' You say. Because it isent. This is basketball. 'Well some guy on youtube says this is football and we are fans. If you play football differently YOU are doing it wrong!' And those people than harass you for playing football like you are meant to while telling everyone how football needs to change to their vision of it.

Hyperbole ofcourse. But point is simply that dnd has rules involved with it. And while some things are open to interpretation (how much roleplay, what is the main focus of the campaign, etc) alot of the rules arent. Dm's can houserule things but houserules are still exceptions to the rule. They still base that exception on the rules of dnd.

Once people say they play dnd but the rules they use bare so little resembling the rules of dnd theyre effectively playing something else and calling it dnd.

My fear is that bg3 will draw in a massive group of new people. Who then come into contact with the older playerbase. They discover dnd isent what they saw in bg3 in alot of cases and will start to make a push to change dnd to their needs so it resembles bg3 more then it does dnd.

More people playing dnd is great. But if they say they want to play dnd, they should play dnd. And not turn dnd into something else.