I am trying something new on the blog today. I have never done this before, so I would love your feedback on this post. Comment down below if you want to see more Play-Throughs like this one.
Today's blog post is a play-through and discussion of a game of Flashlight: Tales of Terror using a scenario I wrote called; Sleepers in the City. I was the GM of the session and I had three players from my weekly RPG group. We normally play Dungeons and Dragons 5E. Therefore, this was a departure from the norm, but not the first time that they have played a horror game that I have GMed. The three players were experienced RPG players.
First off, the Flashlight system does not set the players up for success and is a bit of a death spiral itself. The players have played before, and the system has a high lethality. Before we started play, I reviewed some of the common ideas in horror and reviewed how the system worked, noting that it is a high lethality system. Thankfully character building only takes about 10-15 minutes and allows for some surprisingly well-rounded characters for role-play.
The setting for the game is a post-WWII Noir city. Therefore, everything is in Black and White, there is darkness and long shadows everywhere, and all the Characters had to have a reason to be “on the Outs” of society.
The group all knew each other as the Vet was a member of the Preacher’s community, and the Nurse often went there to minister to the poor.
The Game
In the search they found a few clues:
1. The woman had been strangled to death
2. In the woman’s possession was a postcard for a place called Sandy Beach and written to her by someone named Emma Murdoch
3. A newspaper that detailed a recent string of street walker murders that matched the one they were looking at. They immediately noticed no dates on the paper.
4. A receipt for an Automat called “Just Like Ma’s”
5. A small, ornate and broken syringe flung against the wall with an unknown substance in it.
As the Preacher searched the upstairs of the flop house for anyone else, an old-fashion phone rang. The Vet answered it, and a voice urged them to get out as “They are after you!”. At this point, the Preacher heard glass break upstairs and when he checked he found a group of men in dark coats, bowler hats, and round sunglasses, and unnaturally long spindly fingers.
Passing an insanity check he ran downstairs and urged everyone to flee. That combined with the phone call and the situation, and no one argued, they hoofed it fast. They were easily able to escape in a crowd of factory workers just getting off-shift.
They took a moment to decide what to do next. They all shared their last memories from the previous night, which led to some solid RP as none of this was scripted. They talked about what those trench-coated men were, and too their credit none of them jumped straight to Vampires! Because they weren’t, but Nazis did come up; I mean this is post-war.
From there, they found a few clues pointing them to a place called the Silver Dollar Club. They decided to go there. On the way to the club, the clock struck midnight, and suddenly all the people in the city around them slowly fell asleep! Then, it got really weird as buildings began to shift and change shape, and new ones sprung up and old ones fell away and vanished. They tried to play along and managed to pass more insanity checks. Unnerved and unsure what happened they continued to the club when everyone else awoke, seeming to not notice what had happened.
At the club, they met Emma Murdoch. After some investigation and social activities, Emma greeted the Vet and told him they were engaged to be married, met at Sandy Beach, and had been working with a man named Dr. Franz. The Vet just played along, because they weren’t sure if any of it was true or not. However, Emma seemed to believe it! The Preacher had met Emma before but she seemed to not recall them at all.
After a bit of RP, they decided to go find Dr. Franz. On the way, they experienced another situation where the clock struck midnight and everyone fell asleep. They were very confused. They played along, and this time they observed some of the black coated men flying around and carrying people to various re-formed buildings. They were creeped out but managed to not lose their minds.
At this point, they started to try to recall the date, year, and other details but they could not. They tried to think about things in their backgrounds but they couldn’t! They weren’t even sure what city they were in or what year it was. The players did a great job playing on this via RP.
Concerned they rushed to meet D. Franz. There they met the man who had called them at the flop house. He began to explain how he had been having bad dreams and restless sleep, and a combination of drugs allowed him to stay awake and see “the Others” that the players had seen. The players had been part of Dr. Franz’s clients and had reported the same dreams and sleep problems. He gave them the same drugs, and now they also seemed immune to the Midnight Sleep. Emma thought they were all crazy, so the Nurse knocked her out with chloroform and then dosed her with the same drugs Dr. Franz had used on them.
At this point, a police detective and some cops showed up at Dr. Franz’s door. The players elected to talk their way out of it, and eventually the cops harassed them but went about their business. They wanted to talk to Dr. Franz about the psychology of the street walker killer.
After getting rid of the cops, Dr. Franz told them that he had seen the strange men use a hidden doorway in the industrial district. The Players armed themselves with flashlights and some makeshift weapons from a hardware store and had Dr. Franz lead them to the doorway. After moving through spiralling and maze-like corridors that kept getting smaller, and tighter, they eventually got to a big, sealed bulkhead.
They opened the door and went in, making sure to try and wedge it open after them. Some D&D experience showing through! Inside, they found a huge mural/billboard that looked identical to the Sandy Beach postcard they had found before. They investigated and pulled it away, which revealed a massive window that looked out into the void of space! This was too much for some of them, and they failed some sanity checks.
Just then, they heard a raspy voice and turned around to find several of the strange creatures behind them, brandishing a bronze syringe. They said, “Do not worry, soon this will all be a forgotten memory.” A fight broke out, and it was clear that the Others were not human and could manipulate the world around them in unnatural ways. However, the Flashlights could temporarily blind them.
The Preacher was taken down by a knife wielding Other, but the Nurse got him back up. The Vet managed to knock the syringe away from the lead bad guy, but in a cinematic moment it kept being kicked around the room. Eventually, the Nurse got it but, in the struggle the bad guy managed to wrestle it from her and give her an injection.
Eventually, the Vet managed to use a hammer to smash the glass out to space, and the Others and Dr. Franz were sucked out into the Void. The Preacher barely manages to hold onto Emma! The group managed to get to the bulkhead and seal the room off, however the strain had been too much for the Vet and he started to babble about being turned into a void dragon and flying across space and time. The Preacher succumbed to his wounds shortly after, but Emma was saved.
The end and roll credits.
![]() |
| The Strangers from Dark City |
Conclusion
The players did an amazing job Role-playing the characters and it really made the whole scenario breathe. Sure, it was an investigative railroad, but they knew it was a one-shot and followed the path. They made decisions about what to investigate, dealing with the cops, and how to handle the Others when they appeared. No one tried to solve all their issues with violence, and they seemed genuinely invested in the outcome and interested in where it all led.
The idea of being trapped on a spaceship or station did not seem to impact them as much as the idea that their memories were constantly being reprogrammed and re-written over and over for some unknown reason by an unknown other. Some of them made some comments about how it was a meta-commentary on RPGs in general, which amused me to no end.
The players were very gracious and gave kudos all around to the game. They “hated” the system because it was hard to succeed at any test, but when you did succeed you felt amazing! However, dice rolls were not a common occurrence and often having a score above a certain level or the right occupation/interest in an Attribute granted progress.
Otherwise, they enjoyed the departure from our usual game and it felt suitably different from what we had been doing. One of the players even talked about trying to run a Horror themed mini-campaign after our D&D session ends. Therefore, I guess they like the genre a bit.
There you go. I did not detail every dice roll or game mechanic and just did an overview of the game session. I can get more detailed on mechanics or process if you want but to me the focus of RPGs is not the "can you do this" to "why are you doing it".
Until next time.
Or purchase all out games at the Blood and Spectacles Publishing Wargames Vault Page!




