Pancho wrote:Dave Morris makes a fairly detailed map of the area that The Frozen Horror is supposed to be set in, and yet none of the locations are used and entirely new ones are invented. There are those who say that the American expansions don't fit in with anything else and don't even feel like "proper" Heroquest. I don't go that far but they have a point.
To make matters worse Morris doesn't even include key locations for his own adventures on his own map! Where is Stalag Tor for example (maybe I'm too blind to see it). Looking at his map it looks to me as if Morris planned other books set in this world that he never got round to. A solo Elf and solo Dwarf quest would have been nice. Poor

never gets his own quests.
I do feel the American expansions don't feel like "Proper" Hero Quest, although I wouldn't dismiss them as canon either.
The alliance between Milton Bradley and Games Workshop came to an end in the early 90's, although all other European expansion figurines were provided by Games Workshop, the North American expansions were not.
As my conversations with Donald Kueker revealed, with an exception for the Ogres, the figurines in the Elf quest pack were based off of his sketches, so I would assume things were done in like manner with the Frozen Horror (minus the mercenaries). Admittedly I've never delved deep enough into Warhammer, but I doubt Polar Warbears and the Frozen Horror fit into canon.
Although Hero Quest is based off of the Warhammer world, they are not precisely the same... at some point, particularly the North American expansions break away from the Warhammer canon and the European version of the game. This is probably due to the partnership with Games Workshop coming to an end.
I would imagine Dave Morris' map is based off of the Warhammer world as well. But since the North American expansions were breaking away from the Warhammer conceptualization, doing so without a map of their own, they fabricated names of places that don't exist in the Warhammer world.
Are Dave Morris' books Hero Quest canon? Though he provides names to a Barbarian, Wizard, Elf and Dwarf character there's no mention of Mentor or Zargon or the Emperor.
The games do indeed leave much unaccounted for, and without a precise map to go on, it's not wrong to use Warhammer to fill in the blanks. But as the HeroQuest world is
only based off of Warhammer, any changes made in the game locations are susceptible to recording over preexisting places.