The Dragon in the Bread Oven

On Loaf Day every oven in Nettlecombe is lit before sunrise, and at noon the whole village carries the Great Loaf round the green on a door. Mother Hobb has baked it for thirty years.

This year her son Pim spent his own money at the market on a big brown egg, and put it in the warm corner of the bread oven to keep it safe. At seven o’clock this morning the egg went POP. Something small, coppery and very hungry climbed out, sneezed a spark, and flew out of the window.

Every ten minutes it sneezes. Every time it sneezes, something in Nettlecombe catches fire. And somewhere up on the hill, something much bigger has noticed that its egg is gone.

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🍞 WHAT HAPPENS

A baby dragon on the church roof. A market stall that sold an egg it should not have. A fair green where three things catch fire at once and a goose runs off with the baby dragon on its back. Silly kobolds in the gorse who want the baby for themselves. And at sunset, on the top of Copper Hill, the mother comes.

There is one fight, and the kobolds run away the moment it goes badly for them.

🎲 A 40-page family one-shot for D&D 5e, written for children from 7 to 12 and the grown-up running it — 2-3 hours, 4 players, level 1.

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👨‍👩‍👧 MADE FOR A FAMILY TABLE

▪ Nobody dies. A hero who drops to 0 hit points is “puffed out”: they sit down for one round, then get up with a jam tart

▪ A one-page card of rules for young adventurers to put in their hands: say what your hero does, roll the big die, add the number

▪ A note for younger players in every scene: how to give every child a turn, and how to keep it funny

▪ The clock is a sneeze every ten minutes, easy for a child to follow and fun to count

▪ A real question at the end that children love to argue about: who should give the baby back

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📦 WHAT YOU GET

▪ 5 scenes, every one written out in full: read-aloud text, what happens if they fail, what to do if they skip it

▪ 2 painted battle maps in three versions each — DM, player, and a copy with no grid. 70 px per 5-foot square, so it drops straight into Roll20 or Foundry already aligned

▪ 4 ready-to-play 1st-level characters, finished. They are optional: notes for running it with your own party are included

▪ 1 original creature with a full stat block, plus the kobolds, and a mercy line for the fight

▪ 3 printable handouts, 3 roll tables, 11 secrets and clues at three different costs

▪ 5 people with portraits, each with a voice, a want and a secret

▪ Written help for when the party goes sideways, and a section for your first time running a game

▪ 7 paintings of the adventure to show your players

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✨ THIS IS FOR YOU IF

▪ You want to run dnd for kids, or a first game for your own family

▪ Your table likes funny more than scary

▪ You want a baby dragon, a goose and a village on fire more than a dungeon

▪ You are new to running games and want the read-aloud text already written

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🗓️ SET IN LOWMERE

The valley of The Lowmere Year. This adventure stands completely alone and needs nothing from any other.

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📄 THE FILES

▪ A4 — 40 pages, colour and printer-friendly

▪ US Letter — 42 pages, colour and printer-friendly

▪ 6 map images (2 maps × DM, player, no grid)

▪ 7 paintings

▪ 2 table-scale battle map PDFs, A4 and US Letter

🗺️ The battle maps also print at table scale: two extra PDFs lay every map out at one inch per five-foot square across numbered sheets with a cut line. Print them at home, tape them together and put miniatures on them.

Five downloads: the adventure in one zip (both paper sizes, colour and printer-friendly), the map images, the paintings, and the two table-scale map PDFs.

The printer-friendly build is the same book in pure white, nothing removed.

⬇️ Instant digital download. Nothing is posted to you.

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📜 THE SMALL PRINT

Compatible with Fifth Edition.

Made with AI assistance: the text, maps and paintings of this adventure were written and generated with AI, then edited, checked and laid out by hand.

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🕯️ ONE GOOD EVENING

Games for a table, and for a chair by the fire.