I've done some reading about the backstory to the HOMM3 game, and also reminding myself of some of the stuff going on in HOMM2 and HOMM4; neither of which I've played in literally decades. It was interesting. While many—maybe even most—of the Heroes from HOMM1 carried forward into HOMM2, often with even the same or a very similar portrait, that was not true for HOMM3, which largely had a new cast of Heroes, and only a few familiar faces like Sandro or Gem or Crag Hack. (Although the name was the same, the image of the last two was not exactly familiar, though.) I had forgotten many of the characters that we used in HOMM2 that I liked to recruit based on their exotic and weird portraits, like Mandigal the gray-skinned wizard who according to at least one wiki is supposed to be a vampire, in spite of his faction affiliation. I had also forgotten, mostly because I didn't actually enjoy this game nearly as much, but HOMM4 is literally crawling with Heroes. They have so many compared to HOMM3. HOMM3 has sixteen normal heroes per faction, eight Might and eight Magic heroes, plus the campaign specific unique heroes (which not every faction has.) HOMM4's Academy faction, which happened to be the first that I looked at, has 51 normal heroes and six campaign heroes; quite a bit more. Now, granted—there are also fewer factions in HOMM4 compared to HOMM3 (six vs nine; ten when you add the pirate-themed Cove) so they naturally divide up where more are associated with a single faction than in HOMM3, but there are also more heroes objectively.
I think that's too bad. The heroes were always the most interesting thing about the game.
When I talk about turning HOMM3 into a "D&D" setting, that isn't meant to be taken too literally. For one thing, the actual setting and plots of the Might & Magic and Heroes of Might & Magic games are not at all up my alley, especially with the weirdo science fiction background that they assume. (Kreegans are actually aliens who crash spaceships on planets to conquer them, sorta like The Brood from the old X-men comics which were current more or less at the same time of the heyday of the Might & Magic series. For instance.)
I also don't mean to imply that the PCs would be running around in pitched battles with armies of monsters. They'd actually just be typical RPG-like characters in a more personal story. The constant "world ending" plots are tiresome to me now. I'd greatly prefer the smaller scale more personal stories that are more typical of sword & sorcery instead of high fantasy. Although, in many other respects, the high fantasy tone and vibe is what I'm going for here as opposed to what Dark Fantasy X is. But that's more to imply that the game will be more diverse and colorful, with exotic fantasy races being reasonably commonplace compared to the more humanocentric Dark Fantasy X, and that the game is more overtly "superheroic" in some senses rather than grim and grubby dark fantasy that sometimes borders on just being a horror genre. Elemental Fantasy X is fantasy with a capital F, and if some of the plot elements of high fantasy may be eschewed, other trappings of that subgenre are to be embraced.
Rather, I mean that some elements of the setting as it is presented by the game engine only of the HOMM3 game, as well as many of the specific monsters and races and hero/villain types, will be heavily influenced by HOMM3. I may even attempt to use the random town names in the game engine for setting places, and many of the heroes names from the various games as NPCs. I think it'd be fun for the PCs to run into Astral the Wizard or Lord Haart the Knight (or Lord Haart the Death Knight) or Gem the Sorceress/Druid, even if not all of my players get the references. I would, and that makes it a fun Easter egg for me, at least, if nobody else.
This might be an interesting opportunity for me to trudge out my EBBERON REMIXED setting and see how I can adapt it quickly and easily into a more HOMM3-like iteration. It probably wouldn't be terribly difficult. Eberron in general has much of exactly the right vibe that I'm going for, although there's some specific Eberron things that won't fit super well, like the Warforged or the Mournland. Maybe I can take the elements that I want and redraw them into a simplified iteration of the Khorvaire map, or something like that. I'll probably rename them too; sort of like how I turned Ustalav kinda sorta into Timischburg for the CULT OF UNDEATH project, while still deliberately attempting to give them the same feel as their Eberron prototype. In many ways, I've already done this for at least one region; Baal Hamazi ended up becoming a hybrid of my earlier lightly developed Baal Hamazi from an earlier iteration of the setting, but grafting in a large chunk of the geographical context and many ideas from the Demon Wastes of Eberron. The Shadow Marches, Q'Barra, the Lhazaar Coast, the Eldeen Reaches, Karrnath, Breland, and maybe a handful of other Eberron nations would make the cut into this new context, renamed and remixed a bit. Sigh. Maybe I need to start another wiki. Because, y'know, I've done so much with my Dark Fantasy X wiki already.
In any case, the main focus of the setting would be a magical place not unlike Sharn, where it would make sense for everyone and anyone to be found in at least small numbers. Captains and Battle Mages and Alchemists and Druids and Necromancers and Heretics could all potentially be found here doing their own things for good or for ill, and the colorful various races that make up the Heroes of HOMM3 would all feel more or less at home.
But again; I'm being "loosely inspired" by both Eberron and HOMM3, I'm not trying to specifically emulate either. Just have a similar tone and maybe some similar themes. And part of the reason for that is the shorthand; I don't need to develop nearly as much if I'm using a familiar canvas to make this on in the first place. Nor do the players need to think too hard about it, because while the setting is exotic, it's exotic in familiar ways so they can quickly connect any dots as needed. This is why Robert E. Howard came up with the Hyborian Age; he wanted to have Vikings and Romans and whatever all in the same place, but not be bound by the specific details of historical goings-on. But if readers could immediately recognize a Viking "calque", then he didn't need to write an anthropological thesis to get you up to speed on the cultural context. Stuff was quick and easy and facilitated his breezy, fast style. Warhammer did the same thing with the Old World, and to a slightly less transparent degree, people are still doing it; Paizo's Golarion has lots of references to real world cultures so you don't have to read too much about fantastic cultures to have cultural context. The Linnorm Kings are Vikings, the Taldorans are the Byzantines, etc.
One thing that needs to be addressed; HOMM3 has a whole ton of classes, although they're pretty rules light and don't do much except with modest benefits to your four primary skills, as well as behind the scenes percentages for secondary skill and primary skill advancement opportunities when you level up. At best, you can really say that there's loosely two classes with several small variations; a might and a magic that are colored somewhat to each faction. The Necropolis are perhaps just a little different here because they get Necromancy and build up the power stacks of skeletons. The same situation is true for races; the heros are all kinds of races in HOMM3, especially when they added the Conflux and had all of those elementals as heroes. One of the things that ensrick's portrait pack opened my eyes to a bit was the idea of turning characters like Monere, the Magic Elemental into Monere the .... genasi or whatever, is that that's such an incredibly better idea. I never much liked the elementals as characters, but I'm kind of embarrassed that what is in retrospect such an obvious change hadn't occurred to me. Then again, I guess I hadn't really thought much about HOMM3 in quite a long time until my son (who has been playing it off and on ever since I introduced him to it years ago) came back home and was playing it on his laptop and got me interested in it again. I've also never been a fan of some of the monstrous humanoids that make up so many of the heroes for factions like Dungeon or Fortress or Stronghold.
Actually, the Stronghold isn't such a big deal. The non-humans are either goblins or ogres, but ogres can be interpreted as more like D&D orcs, and then they're not so far off from familiar playable races. I think the gnolls, lizardmen, troglodytes and especially minotaurs seem less so, and I'll have to think about if I even want to include them or not. The efreet and genies and devils can all be interpreted as more like genasi or tieflings or whatever.
To be honest, I kind of like the less information given in some of the earlier games. I've seen a wiki that claims that exotic-looking Wizards from HOMM2 are genies in the case of Flint and Halon, even though they look different from both, and that Mandigal is even a vampire. However, I don't know for sure what the source of that is (the manual, maybe?) when I played the game, they were just funky looking because they were wizards and therefore magical. Somebody had teal skin and someone else had gray skin? Well, they're wizards. What do you expect? That wasn't really true for HOMM3, where a typical race and class kind of thing was pretty familiar. The Warlocks, for example, from HOMM2 were pretty much all human (with one exception; a gray-skinned elf, according to the wiki), and even less exotic than the Wizards. They mostly looked like old men, and not even necessarily cranky ones. In fact, mostly they looked like the stereotype of a wizard even more than the Wizard characters did. I mean, heck—the Knights, who in HOMM3 are seen as the most normal human options in the game, are more exotic than the Warlocks in HOMM2. Tyro is... what, an orc or something? He has tusks anyway, and Maximus is some kind of orc or ogre or lizardman or something.
Finally, let's assign a few regional names. If I want to use an Eberron country as a starting point, I need an alternate name for that place. Donjon's random kingdom name generator and several pushes of the button to the rescue!
Breland = Kingdom of Rodach (protagonist state, but also designed so that anyone can be there and have it be explained. No faction from HOMM3 really is the same.)
Eldeen Reaches = Rewynhowe Frontier (Rampart)
Droaam = Realm of Nevregel (Dungeon)
Darguun = Dominion of Othlon (Stronghold)
Lhazaar Principalities = Principality of Gothrastir (Cove)
Demon Wastes = Giledzar (Inferno)
Shadow Marshes = Doloth Marches (Fortress)
Karrnath = Kingdom of Kharnimrion (Necropolis)
Aundair = Kingdom of Hombarast (Tower)
Thrane = Theocracy of Thamath (Castle)
Mror Holds = Valade Holds (Conflux)
It might be fun to make the map in the VCMI HOMM3 generator and export it to bmp. Then again; it might also be really tedious to do it that way...
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