A few years ago I wrote out the start to a campaign I wanted to run, squarely planted in the “classic fantasy” style. This was before I actually got to play DnD lol.
My idea was to have the first half of the session be all kinds of ways to trigger skill checks, then a multiphase dragon attack, ending with the party being in the right place at the right time and landing the killing blow on the dragon. Obviously there’s no way 1st level mooks could kill a dragon, but if the tower manages to pin it down? I could imagine that 
In my mind this would send the party off with an interesting origin story for a campaign, people would hear of this event and come asking them for heroic help, or would they argue the party simply got lucky? Who knows.
Anyways - here’s the story!
Do you think it would work out at the table? Would it fit with an oldschool system?
My game got canceled so I know what I’m reading tonight! 
I’m sure it can work. My preference would be to make it more open-ended: what if the players choose to do other things? Hide? Flee? Loot the place during the chaos? I’d open up the decision space and riff more on what they do than run it as a set linear path.
Who is the “young man” and why is it important to tell their father about the dragon?
@bryansmiff would you mind if I workshopped this on stream today?
realized I replied via email which doesn’t post for some reason.
Workshop away, have at it!
I was thinking the young man was the son of the lord, in charge while his father was away in the nearest big city. Kind of an initial questgiver and ally who spurs the group to explore while the son helps rebuild.
I think if the players didn’t take the bait to try to be heroes it would still work as just a huge catastrophe occurring around them.
Let’s gooooo!
2025-04-11T16:30:00Z→2025-04-11T17:30:00Z
Here’s the weje board that I used on the stream.