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The Last Days of Constantinople is the first d20 System adventure from Avalanche Press, better known for their fine series of wargames. This module marks the first time a company has tried a historical adventure for d20, and it is an ambitious attempt. Let’s see how it stacks up.

The stand-out feature of Last Days is its wealth of historical information. Author Mike Bennighof clearly knows his stuff, which makes the source information excellent. Bennighof provides enough background on Byzantine society and beliefs for GMs to properly evoke the period. There are also some handy maps, such as the two page spread of the city and the conjectural map of the Blachernae Palace.

Unfortunately, Last Days lacks clear guidelines on character creation for this adventure. A short section on appropriate character classes and backgrounds for the PCs would have gone a long way towards reinforcing the setting. A certain amount of this information is scattered across the introduction material, but a more cohesive treatment would have been nice. Similarly, the adventure seems to assume a low powered world, but this isn’t spelled out. For instance, the Turkish champion Hassan, “the most fearsome individual fighter of his age,” is 5th level. Again, some general campaign guidelines would have been helpful.

The other place Last Days falls down in its application of the rules. Many of the NPCs are constructed incorrectly, with far too many feats. If there was some variant method used to create these characters, it isn’t discussed. The adventure also introduces rules for gaining Honor and Glory, but then fails to give the NPCs ratings in these things. Without such guidelines to work from, it’s hard to know how the PCs compare with their contemporaries. Then there are mechanical additions like Greek Fire. It is given damage of 2d20 10, which is bad enough, but then there is a further rule stating that anyone hit by it is automatically slain. With damage that high and character levels that low (remember Hassan?), the auto kill rule is completely unnecessary.

The adventure itself is fairly entertaining. The PCs basically get a whirlwind tour of Byzantium in its twilight hours. They have the opportunity to meet the Emperor, fight Vlad the Impaler, and try to escape the city alive as Turkish troops swarm in. If the adventure has a fault, it’s the one shot nature of the beast. You get all that great source information on the city, which is promptly made moot by the action of the adventure itself. It’s hard to fault Bennighof for choosing an exciting episode like this for an adventure, but it makes a continuing campaign difficult if you don’t want to follow this up with your own research.

Graphically speaking, Last Days is a mixed bag. While the layout is generally decent, it uses the Mage: the Ascension style of jauntily angled sidebars that I always find annoying. When I’m referencing stats in play, I don’t want stat blocks that run off in different directions. The interior art is a mix of cool, period illos and strange, cartoonish drawings that simply do not match the tone of the adventure. The cover looks to be computer generated. It gets the job done but doesn’t have the style of some of the other covers we’ve seen of late.

In summation, Last Days of Constantinople is a fair adventure with some great setting material. If you have a historical bent, you’ll definitely want to pick this up. Hopefully, Avalanche will enjoy enough success with this release that they’ll do other historical adventures or, better yet, sourcebooks. If they do, they could benefit from someone with a better understanding of the d20 System.