Yeah, changing the details is fine. Tolkien wrote in his letters, "I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama." We're getting work from other minds and hands now. It's normal for a tale to change in the retelling. Given Tolkien never stopped revising and retconning his own work—the Lord of the Rings itself starts with a major retcon to the Hobbit—there's no single source of truth anyway. Points of difference are often interesting to discuss, but their mere existence is not automatically a bad thing.