The Third Verse, by Johnstone Metzger & Tony Dowler

The Third Verse is the third of Johnstone Metzger's Dungeon World / Labyrinth Lord series, and like the previous adventures before this one the River Knife runs alongside the area where this module takes place. I think this is pretty cool because it allows a GM to use all of these adventures as part of a larger campaign and use the River Knife as a constant feature and returning point for the PCs. Either the river is their main method of navigation, or imagine a three-segment artifact that needs to be put together and each piece is found somewhere in all of the adventures. This isn't something that is suggested in any of these modules, it's just my own flight of fancy after having read all of them.

This module has the PCs being asked by a venerable sorceress to complete an ancient song that will banish the monsters the plague this region. There is a short description of the town of Springvale and the sorceress Liniakatra, and the rest of the adventure is a dungeoncrawl. The players presumably learn the first two verses from Liniakatra and then they must venture into the underground temple housing portals that spring forth a variety of monsters to learn the third verse and seal the infernal portals forever.

This is a fun adventure, but short. There are some interesting conundrums and encounters inside the dungeon itself, but some GMs might be turned off by the simple dungeon design. The whole structure of the dungeon and it's denizens reminded me very heavily of playing Gauntlet when I was younger, but it's different enough that most players might not notice the similarities. There is a lot information here to build off as well, with the portals that disgorge otherworldly monsters to the shrine in the last level.

You can purchase both pdf and print versions of "RK3 - The Third Verse" at DriveThruRPG or just a print version at Lulu
Johnstone Metzger also has a blog and a Patreon campaign for writing up monsters in Dungeon World and Labyrinth Lord stats
Tony Dowler also has a blog and a Patreon campaign for creating maps

Evil Wizards in a Cave, by Johnstone Metzger

Evil Wizards in a Cave is the second of Johnstone Metzger's Dungeon World / Labyrinth Lord series, and in a change of pace from some of the other modules this one is a hexcrawl. Those familiar with the previous adventure will see that the River Knife features prominently in the landscape of the setting.

This book has a fairly straightforward sounding adventure: some monks in a monastery, nestled in a mountainous territory plagued with extraordinary monsters, have had a sacred artifact stolen from them by some wizards who are using it to power a far-reaching and nefarious ritual that will affect every living creature in the surrounding region. Find the wizards, stop their ritual, and get the artifact back. Pretty simple really, but not quite.

The thieving wizards have to be tracked down and because the adventure is presented as a hexcrawl this adds a level of anxiety to stopping the ritual. The worst aspect of this is that there is nothing specifically in the adventure to tell you the ritual is happening. There are suggestions on how to impart this information to the PCs like prophetic dreams or insidious rumors, and there is even a suggestion that you just describe an impending supernatural feeling coming from the mountains where the wizards are hiding, in this way it's left very open for the GM to construct their own method of spurring the PCs to action, but not having anything concrete to give the players right away is a huge detraction from the rest of this module.

There is also very little in the way of clues to guide the PCs to the cave where the wizards are hiding, but the map puts the hexes at 2 miles across so it would be fair to give the players an eyeline to the mountains and hills on the map, thus narrowing their search. There are a few magical beasts prowling the area and there is even a dragon, and every hex has some kind of feature that ties into the local population of humans or beasts. The monastery even has it's own twist going on, but the twist seems unnecessary and I suspect this was added on for players who might find the hunt for the wizards too easy.

I have mixed feelings about hexcrawls and that might be why I am not as excited about this adventure as I was of the previous ones Johnstone Metzger has written. There is a lot going on in this adventure and plenty of interesting encounters, but the most interesting part of the module is the ritual the wizards are performing. It's too bad the players are set up to prevent the ritual because I think it would be a lot more fun for the PCs to enter this hexcrawl after the ritual has just been completed.

You can purchase both pdf and print versions of "RK2 - Evil Wizards in a Cave" at DriveThruRPG or just a print version at Lulu
Johnstone Metzger also has a blog and a patreon campaign for writing up monsters in Dungeon World and Labyrinth Lord stats

Knives in the Dark, by Johnstone Metzger

I have a soft spot in my heart for anything that Johnstone Metzger writes, solely because he endeared himself to my sensibilities when I discovered his Heralds of Hell playbooks for Apocalypse World, but also because he can write some damn cool gaming resources and essays (venture down his blog's archives). A short time ago he began writing adventure modules that were dual-stated for both Dungeon World and Labyrinth Lord and so far he has produced six titles, I bought the first two but never got around to reading them until recently.

Knives in the Dark is a creepy horror adventure about undead assassins who have been released from their secret tomb. The town of Affeldeen and the mountain range in which it is nestled, the Black Peaks, serves as the adventure setting. Some dimwitted tin miners act as the catalyst that gets the adventure started, and provide most of the dramatic points for furthering the story.

Instead of a traditional adventure module structure, the booklet acts as a collection of resources for setting up the adventure and letting the players look under the blanket of the story and the setting at their own pace. The social environment around the mining camp and the town is filled with NPCs, about half of which only get a sentence or two but are varied enough that any collection of adventurers should be able to find something to do. The mountain where the shadowy terrors have awakened gets it's own chapter and there is a modest dungeon with plenty of unique challenges laid out within. The book is filled with a plethora of custom moves uniquely wrapped around the environment and the story.

The most interesting and useful part of the adventure are the details surrounding the goals of both the assassins and the Governor, they are explicit enough to give a good direction for why and how the story should unfold but leave all of the intricate details of when the plot opens up in the hands of the GM. There is no railroading here, and the centerpiece villain of the adventure (a dragon made of shadow) might not even show up if the PCs are really efficient at finding and stopping the shadow assassins - though that outcome is as unprofitable as it is unexciting.

This adventure is the first of a trilogy which are given traditional module codes, Knives in the Dark is given the code RK1 which I believe stands for River Knife though nothing in the module explicitly states that. You can purchase both pdf and print versions of "RK1 - Knives in the Dark" at DriveThruRPG or just a print version at Lulu