Verbosh is an adventure from Judges Guild written for Original Dungeons and Dragons. It is a long adventure. Including the covers and maps it is 80 pages long. But this includes a great deal of material. It is written by Paul Nevins and Bill Faust. Verbosh was published in 1979.
This is an expansive work. This adventure includes a wilderness area, the Village of Verbosh, a dungeon (sewers), a multi-layered tower, a small tower, a temple map, another small village and a shipwreck. That is a lot of adventuring areas. The adventure does not specifically state a level range but clearly most of this adventure is low level. But the highest (and lowest) levels of the big tower get very difficult for even mid range characters.
Unlike many adventures there is no specific hook to this one. The areas are presented. The motivations to explore and seek treasure are up to the adventurers themselves.
The “village” of Verbosh is more like a small city. It is a walled town with a small garrison to protect it. There is a king but this king is not loved by the locals. He is not particularly evil or anything. He is more like a slacker.
The adventurers do not have to travel far to find trouble. Trouble is at hand beneath the streets of this town.
What I like about Verbosh
Verbosh is an interesting adventure from Judges Guild. I have not always been impressed with everything I have read from Judges Guild. This is especially true of their Traveler offerings. But this one is a bit different. This one offers a nice large adventuring area in the form of a wilderness map. And it offers several places to explore within that area. It also offers a number of other encounters that could be explored if the players spend some time searching the wilderness.
The multi-leveled tower is nice. It is big. And it has about 10 separate levels (if you include the dungeon below it). Some of the rooms have some creative tricks which I fully intend to steal for my own campaign use.
Verbosh offers a shipwreck as one of the areas to explore. The wreck is not the primary area nor is it extensive. But it is a nice little touch. There are different discrete areas that the adventurers can visit: ship wreck, two towers, wilderness and dungeons. This provides a lot of variety from one product. There are also two different fully developed towns presented.
What I do not like about Verbosh
Very little actually. This one is more complete than many of the Judges Guild adventures that I have read. Granted….room descriptions are often very brief. That is true in every JG adventure.
Would I recommend this adventure to others?
Absolutely. In my opinion after reading Verbosh is that this is one of their better offerings. There are some pretty creative tricks and encounters in this one. This is especially true in the large tower. The tower is more or less a deep level dungeon for the adventurers to explore. And it gets progressively tougher as one moves up.
Would I run this adventure with my own players?
Probably. It is written for OD&D but it could easily be used with a 1st Edition group. One thing that might compel me to run this one in the future is that I am fairly certain my know it all players have not read it before. That is always a plus!
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