I'm bumping this wonderful scenario to post this. And you are free to imagine pelting me with rocks for doing so. I apologize.
My inner nerd has come out of the closet and I have begun to take part in Dungeons and Dragons over the past few months, which lead me to interest in the situation with the Religious Right in this timeline in regards to that. In the OTL, there was a deluge of Fundamentalist/Evangelical backlash as well as just mainstream backlash (albeit intertwined with the religious backlash) at D&D in the 1980s, which still does linger. It was claimed that it was a gateway to Paganism and Occultism and Satanism (assumed to be the same thing), that it made people lose touch with reality and become suicidal or commit acts of real world violence, and was a scourge for the youth of America. It got banned in schools, mothers feared for their children, and it hurt TSR and the games Dungeons and Dragons. Another problem being the mainstream didn't distinguish between D&D and any other roleplaying game, so a lot of BS got lumped together that wasn't even about D&D, and even where it was about some other RPG, it was still crap, but nonetheless.
I wasn't there for it, but it reminds me of backlash that came around Pokemon, for which I was there for. I remember parents losing their minds about "Did you hear how a kid got hit by a car, and instead of helping him the people just collected his Pokemon cards that flew into the street?"; a kid that came from "somewhere" in America and didn't really exist, because the parents and teachers in my area were ding-dongs who didn't look into things, and are terrified of their existence like it seems they are across America. Hence the scapegoat of Rock music, or Dungeons and Dragons, or Rock music that wasn't their Rock music, or Video Games, etc, and terror around them and all the made up, rumor invented horrors like Rainbow Parties (which also never existed). D&D seemed more special in that regard than others, though, because all those parent group fears and rumor coalesced around it. There was a time that you could buy Dungeons and Dragons in Toys R Us and it was on its way, and that progress was retarded and the hobby really hasn't recovered since then. It certainly didn't help TSR, and other business difficulties would drive it out of existence and have it sell off its assets to Wizards of the Coast.
My curiosity, which may not be able to be responded to without spoilers, is on what will happen in regards to all of that in this timeline, as the image of the timeline is one that includes Pat Robertson. If that can't be responded to without spoilers by the timeline author, it is something to consider.
I'll also link this 700 Club "documentary", called "
Lost Without a Compass", and I suggest looking into films/books like "Mazes and Monsters", organizations like B.A.D.D, and so forth.