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.

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.

The Adventure

As the crew sails towards the Astral plane they suddenly see tons of flowers in the water as well as lots of sea creatures. Thomas checks the flowers, but they are normal. (ie not magical) Suddenly the current seems to “grab” the ship and start pulling it to an island. The Captain has everyone head to various stations where they can help with navigation and they help avoid any damage to the ship. The current carries the ship far up the shore and it’s beached. Thomas attempts to push the ship, but it’s way too heavy and too far ashore.

The Adventure

The living star, which takes the shape of a turtle, is named Shelly by the crew. It becomes over-excited while playing with the crew and causes some of the wood on the ship to sprout leaves and branches and attracts the attention of a squid-like sea monster. After the heroes get rid of the sea monster, the Oahtu who joined the journey a while ago help repair the ship.

I covered the first 3 boxes from Dungeon in a Box back in October. I don’t want to repeat too much from that review, but here are some quick highlights:

• 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.

Once the party was back on the ship after the events with the mermaids they let Hal know that dragonfire is needed to melt the adamantine on the star. Hal consults his charts and they head towards the Archipelago where Lux lives. The since the adventurers have the star, the Blackrift compass points towards them. Many Blackrift ships approach and they’re boarded. They fight a Far Elf Lunar Monk and 2 Link Acolytes. Before more enemies can board, Aurora arrives and incinerates the ship nearest them. They end the battle and Aurora lands on the deck of the ship.

After dealing with the lich and the leviathan, the characters find themselves alone on the ocean. They sail on in the direction the compass directs. Eventually they reach a point where the compass is going in circles like it did when the leviathan was near. Everyone looks over the edge, but only Hazel and Amelia have the prior knowledge to recognize that they are above some merfolk architecture. They sail in the direction of the merfolk architecture, but are dragged a mile back by water elementals.

This was our second non-kiddie Dungeons and Dragons 5e campaign after Humblewood. As it says on the tin, this is a very dungeon-focused adventure. I reviewed the first 3 adventures from the point of view of the Dungeon Master a while back. This is a session recap of the adventure as experienced by the players. If you’re not a DM, but someone who might play, there are spoilers below!

Note: we didn’t play in a VTT, I’m just using it to illustrate some key moments from each session.

In my reflections on a year of being the family DM I mentioned we started playing the Dungeon in a Box campaign Voyage of the Fallen Star. It’s a monthly subscription that provides a connected story that takes place over a year. I’ve finished DMing the first 3 adventures, so I wanted to talk aobut my impressions with the content so far.