Shadows Over Garenport, play and adaptation

My son and his wife are living with us again temporarily. By temporarily, I probably mean for months, maybe even the better part of a year. They were talking with me and my daughter and son-in-law the other night, and there was casual talk about them wanting to play "D&D." My son-in-law Caleb suggested that if so, I would have to be the GM. Which I'm totally fine with. I'd love to give Shadows Over Garenport a go, and I'm almost ready to run. I need to redo the Scooby-gang characters and print out the inserts for my GM screen, but other than that, I'm good to go.

This is something that I'm very excited about, and hope that it comes to fruition soon. There's a few things that will possibly get in the way (interruptions of my son's little kids, and my daughter's ambivalent interest in playing) but I suspect that my other son's girlfriend may enjoy this if I could talk her into playing too; she's got a theatre background and theatrical interests... in spite of her upbringing in a small town in Wyoming, and her continued schooling in a small town in Idaho, where theatrical pursuits are probably pretty few and far between. We'll see what comes of that; so far, it was just a small offhand conversation, but it sounded positive. I don't want to be pushy, and we've got a lot of immediate concerns that will occupy us for a few weeks before we're ready to seriously consider it, I think.

However, my son, who I introduced many years ago to Heroes of Might and Magic III, has brought this game back to me. I was a fan of the series back in the Heroes of Might and Magic II days, in the later 90s, and I was around in "the community", which back then was a website and a listserv run by a guy named AstralWizard. I remember when the expansion packs were released. I remember when the Forge controversy happened, and I contributed in my own small way towards effecting that change. Although I also believe that it was incredibly foolish to think that such a drastic change in tone wouldn't impact the fan reception to the game. Developers are all alike. Although NWC did change their plans based on fan feedback, there seems to have been the generation of some ill will because of it, and resentment on their part that their vision was rejected by enough of the fans that they had to abandon it or risk the financial viability of the continuation of the game. Hardly seems something to be resentful of. They should be lucky that they got the feedback when they did and not after it was too late.

Heroes3 is now almost 25 years old, having been released in 1999, when I was a young student and had very small kids. My son who reintroduced me to the game, was too young to play it when it was released; he was three. He now has a three year old of his own. In spite of that, the game has surprising longevity, and fans have kept it alive for decades, even releasing mods that qualify as full-blown expansion packs in their own right in terms of content and professionalism.

The most popular of these seems to be Horn of the Abyss, which adds a new pirate-themed town, and a number of other structures and terrain types. A lot of these seem to be redrawn elements from Heroes2, honestly, which is kind of cool.

I may install this mod, and then make a map (or three) of the Dark Fantasy X setting. The first one would, of course, be a Shadows Over Garenport map. Interpreting this into the Heroes3 milieu will be challenging, but then again, people (including me, in the past) have been interpreting other works into this milieu for years, in spite of their poor fit sometimes. Lord of the Rings has numerous interpretations, as does all kinds of actual historical events or eras.

Anyway, my personal life continues to be chaotic, to the point where it's difficult to make any confident plans for blogging progress on anything specifically, or gaming, or anything else. I take each day at a time, and often—honestly—fritter away whatever free time I manage to have, just sitting with my grandkids, or playing around on my phone, on youtube, or now on Heroes3.