Best dragonslaying adventure(s)?

[Mercurius]

In my memory there has never been a truly great dragonslaying adventure in D&D; there have been pretty good ones, but not a true classic that explicates the core archetype of:

a) angry/old dragon terrorizes land and/or destroys city, probably dwarvish
b) fearful villagers/king call for adventures to help, and/or adventures hear about the rumored great dragon and its treasure in Mount X, "From which none have returned..."
c) adventurers realize they need a magic weapon(s) or artifact(s) of some kind(s) to slay the dragon, go on side quest for such item(s).
d) adventurers travel to dragon's layer, perhaps face its minions, eventually face the dragon itself.

(Or some variant of the above; you might have noticed that I'm combining elements of the early 80s movie Dragonslayer--an underrated classic fantasy movie, imo--and the late 80s fantasy comic, Adventurers, an unknown masterpiece imo--the best fantasy comic I've ever read, at least the first sequence).

I've been wanting to run such an adventure for a while and would actually love to make it into an adventure path, one that could theoretically span ten or more levels, from 4E's mid-Heroic to Epic. Ideally someone has done some of the legwork already - are there any good examples of this sort of classic dragon quest, whether in single adventure, mini-campaign or adventure path format?

 

[Aramax]

In my game I have dragon mating season every now and again
and have epic multi dragon fights w/wyverns,pegasis,unicorns and griffins taking sides

hm... I think it might be time again

 

[MatthewJHanson]

Interestingly I thought that you were going to include "The Hobbit" on your list of inspiration, since that what I thought about while reading it.

It's much shorter than what you are asking for, but we at Sneak Attack Press do have a dragon hunting adventure called Hunting Deathcloud. A dragon captures an elven princess (and others) and the PCs must find and slay the dragon.

 

[RangerWickett]

Ah, I'll have to make sure EN Publishing opens up 5th edition with a good old dragonslaying adventure.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Ah, I'll have to make sure EN Publishing opens up 5th edition with a good old dragonslaying adventure.

I would like to see Enpublishing do modules in addition to adventures

 

[Mark CMG]

Keep track of upcoming episodes of The Tome Show for some dragon slaying adventure goodness.

 

[Treebore]

Sabre River is awesome enough for me. As well as the two Flame adventures in Dungeon magazine.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

There was a lot of dragon slaying in the original 3E adventure path (I particularly like Forge of Fury for lower-level characters). But I'll admit they don't have all of the "classic" elements you mention.

I included a dragon in Raiders of Oakhurst for 4E to get that feeling at lower level, though again, in that adventure the dragon is a "power behind the scenes" rather than an overt village-threatening type.

 

[Ulrick]

There was a lot of dragon slaying in the original 3E adventure path (I particularly like Forge of Fury for lower-level characters). But I'll admit they don't have all of the "classic" elements you mention.

The Forge of Fury is a classic. You can easily replace the "searching for lost dwarven treasure" plot hook with "oh no, a dragon is marauding the countryside." In fact, I think Forge of Fury is the best module by WotC from that time.

 

[Nebten]

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Dragon-Mountain-2nd-Fantasy-Roleplaying/dp/1560765984"]Dragon Mountian [/ame] taken as is can fill parts c) and d) for you. That doesn't stop you from adding a) and b), but the way it is ran it is a more proactive on the part of the PCs to go to Dragon Mountian. There is a lot of work on running the kobold politics once inside the mountian and a lot of DM's get annoyed by this. Of course, again, you can add or subtract from this as much as you want.

I ran the module back in the day and had a good time just reading it let alone running it. Looking back there could of things I did differently but that dragon battle at the end was a classic fight.