I recently got the Pathfinder 2e Beginner Box: Secrets of the Unlit Star. I did an unboxing and first impressions video. I will come back and do a proper review after I play it.

2025 was the year I leveled up my TTRPG skills (no pun intended). It started off with my participation in New Game Master Month in February. Kobold Press was a sponsor and had a coupon for the core books so I moved off the free rules and onto the main, published rules. I consumed lots of TTRPG content on YouTube, reddit, and enworld - lots of it focused on being a better GM or a more creative GM. This may have come out already if I published the other end of year blog posts before this one, but TTRPGs ended up eating up a lot of free time and reducing the time I spent on reading, video games, and programming as the year progressed.

Gameplay

As the city bells go off, the heroes arrive at the town square. They see a rare sight - elven folk - surrounded by the Ironguard and an unruly crowd forming. The town hasn’t seen elves in decades and is scared this might be an invasion. Tris stops the riot and calms the townfolk. She speaks with the elves and finds out that they are under attack by giant spiders. Their pact not to harm forest life means they can’t do anything about this. The group agrees to help the elves.

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.

Gameplay

As Grumpy, Tris, and Sasha were at the local tavern getting some cinnamon rolls, they noticed a goblin nailing something to the notice board. It turns out to be one of the kids of the owners of the Pits of Perild, an amusement park and beginner dungeon. They agree to help him. On the way to the park they fight some vampire bats while camping.

When they arrive they learn from the matriarch that Troglodytes are not honoring their agreement. They were supposed to stay in the lower levels (away from the starter dungeon first level) and only eat any unlucky adventurers that went in deep. Now they have infiltrated the first level and are attacking the guests. The team decides they will help figure out what’s going on. Also, they are to keep an eye out for her husband.

It’s the final day! We got the tiny dice! Let’s look at those and then let’s do our summary of this year’s dice advent calendar.

It’s the final die from the bloody metal set. What could be in the tomorrow’s door??

I was able to stay caught up today so let’s see what was in the flap!

It’s Sunday! Let’s get caught up on the the last 3 days’ dice!

Another busy period kept me from writing this blog post until I had 4 days of dice. However within these dice I found a nice little surprise among the dice I expected.