I previously reviewed the first half of Dungeon in a Box as two separate blog posts. (Q1 and Q2). Since I fell behind with the other two quarters, I’ll review the rest all at once.

Important highlights from the first two posts:

• I get the physical subscription. It also comes with digital assets for each box as well as access to their Wonderous One-Shot digital assets.
• The digital assets include a Pathfinder 2e conversion
• each box comes with a gridded map for the dungeon portion of the adventure, skinny minis, and 1 or 2 3D printed minis.

This post is intended for dungeon masters. There are story spoilers below.

Content

Box #7 - Forge of the Dragon Lord

What I liked the most about this box is that it starts to bring everything together from the campaign. We start seeing the return of various NPCs and a lot of the lore the characters have been learning begins to make sense. The plot of this box involves going to a group of islands owned by red dragon Aurora’s mother. While there they run into Captain Catapult (the tabaxi pirate) again. Also they have the opportunity to meet a professor that is a provides some plot hints about the next box. There’s also a plot involving the caste system that involves dragons, dragonborn, and kobolds. The secret of the sunken star is revealed - it’s a star turtle!

Box #8 - Raid on the Library of Secrets

The players get the chance to learn about the star turtle and their ultimate destination. After that, the players enter the main dungeon which is based on puzzle solving rather than simple exploration. This is great if your players need a changeup from the previous dungeons, but not so great if they aren’t into puzzles. That said, the puzzles are pretty well designed.

Box #9 - Battle in Paradise

This box presents the players with a conundrum. In a fey-adjacent world, the inhabitants have been granted immortality and live in peace, if a bit simply. However, the players learn that this has come at a bit of a cost - the inhabitants have lost their memories of who they were before they came to the island. A bunch happens, but ultimately the players have to decide whether to leave the folks without their memories or to return the memories and have them lose their immortality. It’s potentially a pretty poignant moment in the story and a great end to Q3. Also we have a reappearance of Captain Catapult.

Box #10 - The Twisted and Greedy

After dealing with Captain Catapult, the team also meets up with Aurora for the third time before heading into a series of caves filled with all sorts of horror. The players have to use their wits and martial powers to fight against 3 hags and their monsters. My table (which is made up of my kids 13, 9, and 9) weren’t into this dungeon at all. They are OK with horror topics, but it’s not their favorite.

Box #11 - Hunters of the Dark Ice

The players find a society of sentient penguins (considered in this world to be an Aarokokra variant). They learn the origins of the far elves and how different their society was hundreds of years ago. Of all the adventures in the second half of the campaign, this one has the most opportunity for roleplay. The middle portion of the adventure involves exploring the penguin town. By using the included supplement about the penguin town there’s a chance for the players to have a nice respite from the prior dungeon and what is coming ahead. Then they have to deal with a depressed sorcerer, the source of the malaise that has befallen this town. (fun fact, a lot of a penguin society is based on Norse society)

Box #12 - The World’s Edge

This is what everything has been building towards - the team has found the star pieces, opened the fallen star to find the star turtle, and found out they only have a limited amount of time to get the turtle to the astral plane. They finally arrive and, of course, the Far Elves are there. The team has the final confrontation and, depending on how things go, finally get their wish.

Bonus: Box #13

I thought things would end with Box #12 since it was billed as a year of dungeon crawls. But each Dungeon in a Box campaign sets up the world for the next campaign. This box is the bridge adventure. Since we weren’t planning on playing anymore and my table was burnt out on DiaB, we decided to skip this one. It does come with a MASSIVE figurine.

DM Suggestions

More or less each box ends up with a new character joining the group. The final box says all of them can come along on the final adventure. Since our table only had 3 players I would often play the part of one of the new characters. How well this works depends on the DM’s skills. It could also work with one of the players controlling the extra characters, but my players hate doing that.

In “The Bad” below I mention a few of my criticisms with the books as written. My advice for the DM would be to maybe incorporate other ships into the campaign. These could function as floating shops (for the players to spend their gold! and/or upgrade weapons) and could also pass mail back and forth with their conclave to bring that aspect of the story more to the fore.

The Good

I really enjoyed the repeated enounters with important NPCs as the campaign went on. They provided a sense of continuity and, in the case of Captain Catapult, a bit of levity. There are also some great potential chances for memorable NPCs based on how the DM plays them.

The dungeons were well-designed with a good mix of traps, loot, and story beats. The overall story progressed in an entertaining way. Lots of extra mechanics were introduced to make things more engaging - like ship-to-ship combat and so on.

The regular 3D minis and skinny minis continued to be top-notch and can be reused in future campaigns.

The Bad

A lot of the same negatives carry over across the entire campaign. The organization the group works for never turns out to be an important aspect of the campaign. There also aren’t any places for the crew to spend all the gold they get over the course of the campaign. Sure, the GM could change things a bit, but the story definitely seems to imply a need for hurry and dilly-dallying seems opposed to the tension the campaign is trying to create. Most of the time the Far Elves are either trying to get the star pieces before the players or kidnap the star turtle from the players. So it seems odd to have them go back to any of the cities of Greenwold.

This is not a fair complaint for a campaign called “Dungeon in a Box”, but if your table is not into dungeon crawls, this is not the campaign for you. One of my players stopped playing with 3 boxes to go as they were bored with the constant dungeon crawling. They are much more into the roleplaying aspect of the game. It’s not just that dungeon crawls feature in this campaign, it’s almost the entire point of the campaign, especially in later boxes.

Conclusions

I found Dungeon in a Box when I was looking for the D&D equivalent of Paizo’s Adventure Paths. I had discovered DnD Adventure Club, but was looking for something a little less kiddie. It aced the assignment with the fact that it provided a monthly adventure. Each month’s box had the 32-ish page booklet that provided background information, the map(s), 3D minis, and skinny-minis. It is an awesome product. Where it didn’t meet my desires is that it was always a dungeon crawl. Dnd Adventure Club and the Paizo Adventure Paths provide a mixture of adventure types. Sometimes they are puzzle-based, sometimes they are more roleplay heavy, and sometimes they have dungeons to explore; they provide a lot more variety.

So, after having finished the campaign, would I recommend it? It depends on the table. Some tables love dungeon crawls - it’s part of the reason OSR is having such a renaissance. I’ve also seen many posts on reddit where the DMs say their tables just want to go into a dungeon, kill monsters, and get loot without worrying too much about the roleplay. If this is your table, I cannot recommend it enough. I loved the quality of everything that arrived. My only criticism - the cardboard terrain could have had better assembly instructions.

If your table is not into dungeon crawls, they will probably eventually get bored with the campaign like my table did. This specific campaign, with its tight timeline doesn’t lend itself as much to winging it and spending lots of time back in town with roleplay.

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