Well, I got some feedback from Tangerine the barbarian on the heroes' view of Rescue of Griz and she didn't think it was as boring as I thought. Or that is to say, she didn't think the situation with the old lady with the crossbow was as boring and pointless as I did. She said it was kind of neat to see an NPC that wasn't a baddie and didn't need to be rescued. That doesn't happen in HeroQuest very often, she pointed out. They didn't know if she was going to use the crossbow or not, she said, so at least to her, it was kinda fun.
However, I would still recommend skipping that one, because...
We played Quest 2: Against the Giant, and this was much more fun. For starters, the heroes were excited to finally use the Dragon Strike board I've been carrying in my HQ box for the last month or so. This quest had a really good "exploration" factor, which may have been partially due to the new board, but definitely made this quest feel more like HeroQuest than the Rescue of Griz did. For us, Against the Giant was a good dungeon-crawling adventure that felt like HQ, but had some new and different elements from Dragon Strike.
Which is exactly what I wanted from the Lord Narran's Battles quest pack!
Miranda the elf slays Grunt the giant!
One thing to note, I homebrewed the adventure to include the "dragon counter" from the original Dragon Strike adventure, which definitely changed the game a bit. (After 15 turns, the dragon shows up, basically. I also added that "the dragon storms into the cavern so powerfully that the walls at the end of the five outgoing hallways crumble, creating five new exits")
This is obviously an optional mechanic, and I'm not sure I would recommend it across the board (no pun intended). It depends what kind of game you want...
With fifteen turns, there was enough time for my heroes to go the wrong way and fight the Bugbears; then go back to find and slay Grunt the Giant; then make it almost to the start/exit before the dragon appeared. Tangerine
and Blasto, our new wizard, basically ran around the dragon to escape, while the elves, Miranda and Sparky, had to fight their way out. Sparky fell in battle, but Miranda was able to use her Timestop spell to move twice and escape.
This worked nicely for us, because we wanted a relatively quick game; some of us had work in the morning. But the heroes did not get a chance to explore the other side of the cave and find out what Grunt's key would open.
So, with my homebrew, there are two options: use the dragon counter to keep the game quick; or play without it to have a longer, more exploratory game. Take it or leave it.