I don’t know how to navigate a difficult and increasingly stressful friendship

I [21M] have been friends with “Lucas” (for the sake of anonymity) since high school. We met and bonded over a collective interest in fantasy, him wanting to try DnD, and Middle-Earth. Since then, we’ve been part of the same friend group and have played TTRPGs, wargames, and hung out as nerds do.

Recently, however, I have been quite stressed about our friendship. He and I have grown to be very different people, leaning on different sides politically, a differing level of interest in our original shared interest (I am not as invested in Middle-Earth as he is, and our most common hang outs involve playing a Middle-Earth wargame), and generally having different personalities. His is quite ‘abrasive’, for lack of a better term, often with the mentality of “I don’t care what you think”, whereas I’m a bit ‘softer’ and sensitive.

I was invited to a hang out with him this weekend, and am stressing over what to do. I do not really want to go. I often leave our hang outs exhausted and hurt. Admittedly, this is very childish, but “Lucas” is not much fun to play war games with, nor to converse to. When he’s winning, he’s often bored, and kind of looks down on me (as I am not as good as he is, and not very tactically-minded). I feel made fun of, with him and another friend making comments about how little “points” I scored and all that.

Then, the conversation that typically follows often turns political, overly-sexualized, aggressive, uninteresting, and/or just difficult to navigate. I don’t feel like I contribute anything, and mostly sit there uncomfortable.

The thing is, he’s been a good friend, I think. I often feel I haven’t, in comparison. I know he doesn’t have many other friends, really, especially as we are learning to manage adult life and how friendships change from it. I don’t want him to be lonely, and I know I am lonely (I don’t really have any other consistent hang-outs), which may be muddling my judgement.

Beyond that, I worry that if he and I grow apart, it will cause me to lose another friend of mine, who I deeply value and enjoy (our conversations, when I drive him home, are usually the highlight of our hangouts, for me).

Sorry, that’s a long post. I don’t know what to do, or how to approach this. Any advice?