Is it safe to return stories in forum_get_topics ?

I have a single forum on our site www.batgung.com, and would like it to be the single 'what's new' list for all content. It looks like forum_get_topics is where the list of nodes to be displayed is generated, so I was thinking I could change the SQL to also return story nodes.

Is it that simple, or is it going to break a lot of things elsewhere?

Or is there a better way I should be looking at this?

My problem is that we have stories and forum posts, and comments on both. I have added a 'what's new' bock to show recent stories, posts, and comments, but the list is short so comments can quickly fall off the end - then there is no way to know a story has been commented and needs a response. So I'm thinking if stories also appear in the forum list, 'newest comment first', people will have one place to go to see everything new since their last visit.

Thank in advance for any help & ideas.

mrb