Reviews may be lightly edited for formatting and clarity.
Capturing reconnections with your family is not something this reviewer is accurately aware of, having never left his homeland nor being closely related with immigrants. He only knows what it would feel like to lose the touch - which he’s acutely aware of and dreads. ‘Beneath the Surface’, however, creates those feelings for him with their Actual Play.
An all BIMPOC cast made up of immigrants or child of at least one immigrant parent, the story they weave through is emotional, sometimes, gut-wrenching, dealing with family trauma, generational trauma, baggage of expectations, the great ‘Dream’ an immigrant may have, escape, and uncovering of truths.
In my subsequent studies and talks with immigrants or children of immigrants, I’ve found these things to be true. The Actual Play focuses less on the cinema of it all, and more on genuine connections between the characters in the roleplay. The underlying system of resolving conflicts for the AP is ‘Masks: A New Generation’ by Magpie Games.
The diverse cast is GM’d by Kris, and is made up of Clare Murphy as Carmen Pereira, Danny Quach as Myto Bui, Nala J. Wu as Tamsyn "Tam" Zhao, Valiant Dorian as Gabriel Zhao, and Victor Manso as Orúno Munín. Together, we see them explore Brazilian folklore and themes of belonging, memories, finding oneself as opposed to the vision of others, and acknowledgement of parental mistakes.
We see the story of siblings - finding each other for the first time in the ‘afterlife’, where the players have gone. We see the burden of trying to make our family proud and losing oneself in the process. We see families lying to their children for reasons known only to them, sometimes for their own gain, sometimes for their children. Unintentional selective memories become unraveled in retrospect where a sibling realises how much a parent hated the other child. Death, symbolic, becomes a key focal point not in a negative sense, but a coming together - a reunion of things long lost. And we see a drive for knowledge, taking ‘scientific facts’ off the pedestal and putting actions in context in the history of their people, their family; a drive for empathy, a drive for reconnection.
The Actual Play in itself is not a technical marvel, nor an entirely new form in AP territory, but what it strives for and excels in, is taking the seen before immigrant story of reunion, taking it apart, and looking beneath the surface.
There is much to say about "Beneath the Surface," produced by Tabletop Tempest. To start, there are very few shows that are so intentional not only in their casting, but also in the stories they are choosing to spotlight. The use of mythology from non-western countries is going to inherently stand out against a sea of others, and here it feels deeply personal.
Really, that is a feeling that radiates out from the production as a whole. The storytelling that is happening throughout the series is vulnerable. It is emotional and taps into the very real history of the cast as they work together to touch on themes of community and family through the lens of immigrants. This is not an easy story to tell. And yet, it is one that is being treated with the utmost care by the players and the gm alike. I was thrilled to see players step into the role of facilitator, asking each other questions to better set the scene and to allow their fellow players to shine through introspective narration. Everyone at the table is engaged and invested, even in long periods of inaction because each moment, each emotional beat is awarded equal importance.
The series is, at its very core, earnest. The mechanics of the game are merely an avenue to guide the players through the story they are telling and to add additional stakes. The GM uses these mechanics to support the players but does not hand-hold them either. The risks are real, and the dice sometimes have their own story to tell. That being said, it
is always interesting to see a system such as Masks being applied in an unconventional setting. It is a reminder that we as creatives should not limit ourselves, both in the stories we want to tell and how to tell them.
The background music was perfect for the tone of these scenes, bittersweet but hopeful and supported the performances of the cast beautifully. Actual Play can be the medium for stories like these, and Tapletop Tempest has set a wonderful example.
This review was written collaboratively by Aida and Michelle, two staff at EUphoria. We both watched/listened to the assigned show, made individual notes, then discussed and collated our thoughts into one review. In particular we aimed to consider how each show screener delivered on their stated purpose and themes, as well as considering the following elements: accessibility and inclusion, visual/sound design, incorporation of game mechanics, and performances.
Conveyance of Theme:
This screener demonstrated very strong themes of reconnecting with family, building family ties, and how we develop a renewed understanding of our childhood experiences as adults. The themes carried through every scene, as we learned how the character’s personalities were shaped by their childhood experiences, how their powers were informed by their memories, and how their personal experiences of family pain and loss led to different outlooks on the meaning of family. We loved the scene with the child smiling at themself in the mirror, which strongly conveyed their challenges and growth. The letter in the last scene was an excellent choice to tie these themes together with a pre-written script while still allowing the other performers to improvise around their response. It was clear to us that behind the scenes everyone involved in the making of this show had communicated to ensure they were on the same page about what the key themes were, and had worked hard to consider their approach to these themes. This work definitely paid off.
Clarity of Purpose:
The show info document states that the team “came together to tell a story of what generationally-passed-down culture and expectations actually mean for the “next” generation. Authentic voices represented numerous cultures around the world, and reflections of real-worldculture and beliefs (especially indigenous in Brazil) reflected in food, gender, spoken word, art, expressions, and more."
As mentioned above in the theme section, we feel that the first part of this purpose was fulfilled admirably. However, we felt that this screener did not demonstrate a great deal of specificity around indigenous cultures or beliefs. We would have liked to have seen more specific references to and incorporation of cultural food, art, gender expressions, beliefs around family and generational expectations - we suspect that the full show most likely includes these things
more explicitly, but were disappointed that they weren’t included in the screener as it was clearly a large part of the mission of this show.
Access and Inclusion:
We always love to see an overlay that leaves plenty of room for clear, readable captions! It looks like your show was livestreamed rather than pre-recorded, and we all know that autogenerated live captions have their limitations, but you did well within those circumstances. We would strongly encourage not having any kind of logos overlapping with your caption box - there was a small circular dice logo at the bottom of the box which made it tricky to read the captions as they appeared.
Your screener included several context slides which had a lot of text on them and went by too quickly for us to read. Consider giving as little text as you possibly can in these context slides and splitting them up for readability. We also question whether you needed them at all; the scenes you included were very strong and stood well on their own. Maybe all you really need is a basic info slide or two at the start stating the system being used and the cast names.
Your submission stated “n/a” under content warnings and we disagreed with this assessment. Parental neglect was a repeated theme throughout the screener and we feel this should be included in content warnings.
We loved seeing an all-PoC cast, especially given the subject matter of this story. To improve your inclusion ever further, consider trying to avoid the use of potentially ableist terms such as “crazy” or “madness,” and try alternatives such as “wild,” “bizarre,” “unpredictable,” “chaos.”
Game Mechanics:
This screener did not include very much use of the Masks system and focused more on roleplay elements, which meant it took us a while to figure out which system was being used while watching. The mechanical moments we did see were effective, with the GM clearly explaining the mechanic and the outcome of the dice roll impacting what happened next in a natural and believable way. We also liked that you included some fun banter such as “this is not a pity roll!” to highlight that this was an improvised Actual Play and not a scripted performance.
Performances:
The performances in this AP were incredibly strong and impressive all-round. Each scene felt grounded and engaging, with strong narration of the character’s actions moving seamlessly into dialogue. We very quickly got a sense of what kind of person each character was as soon as we heard them speak. The GM also demonstrated excellent character work, with clearly defined NPCs and the use of gentle voice modulation to differentiate them without falling into cartoonish character voices. Emotional moments were played with a beautiful subtlety and realism, drawing us in and making us feel for these characters even though we had only just met them, and the serious emotion was deftly balanced with moments of levity. It was clear that everyone at this table has a real talent for improvisation and characterisation.
The GM’s narration was very focused and painted excellent visual pictures of scenes and action. This is a real skill, and we were impressed by how much information the GM could convey about a scene, movement and visual dynamics in a short piece of narration. The GM was gracious in giving performers the space to roleplay and had strong instincts around when to step in and add narration or move the scene along, as well as showing a clear commitment to giving every character moments in the spotlight. Again, this speaks to the strong performance skills at the table and the GM’s trust in those skills as well as their own.
Our only critique was that we felt some of the performers lacked camera awareness at times, and would appear disengaged or even bow their head in a way that hid their face from view when they were not actively participating in a scene. It was very jarring when this happened, as most of the time the other players were reacting and engaging silently with scenes they weren’t in, which is always lovely and directs the viewer’s attention to what is happening.
Sound Design:
The choice of music was very fitting and enhanced the emotional beats of the scenes. We enjoyed the moment when the players laughed about a roll and the music cut out then resumed when the scene resumed, allowing us to enjoy the over-the-table moment and then be brought back into the world of the story smoothly.
One of us thought the music was at a good level throughout while another felt that in the later scenes it sometimes competed a bit with the performers - this was likely due to variation in the volumes of each player’s mic. We also heard a bit of background noise and peaking from the GM’s mic at times, especially when there was no music to cover it. We suggest trying to set up everyone’s mics at a consistent volume before starting, and making sure no one’s mic is too loud to avoid background noise and peaking. We appreciated that players tended to mute their mics when not in a scene, so that there was no distracting environmental noise or audible reactions.
Visual Design:
Your overlay was lovely to look at, with a strong colour scheme and a very clean, elegant design invoking a gentle, dreamlike story. It fit really well with the tone of every scene and enhanced the viewing experience by giving a sense of place. We’ve rarely seen an overlay that utilises the space so well and has such a nice balanced layout of different elements. Perhaps the empty rectangle underneath each player’s window could have been used to include character
pronouns or performer names, although we also appreciated the choice to minimise information and keep the look of the overlay clean.
Most of the time the players had their faces very neatly focused in the centre of the frame and zoomed in equally, which made it easy to see the nuances of their performances and avoidedany one performer drawing focus. They also had simple, clean backgrounds. This worked very well, although there were times when the framing of Carmen was not consistent with the others, which was distracting to the eye. Similarly, we felt the GM’s camera was too zoomed out, giving too much view of distracting background elements in their room. The third scene, in which the GM and Carmen were more tightly framed, achieved an excellent visual balance.
Overall/closing thoughts:
Beneath the Surface is an AP full of exemplary talent who worked together to tell a moving character-driven story. We were impressed by the performances of all the players and the GM and thought the visual and sound design worked well to complement these performances. While we did miss seeing more specific cultural elements in the storytelling, the themes of familial trauma and healing were deftly explored. We loved watching this show and hope our thoughts and feedback are useful to you in future projects.
Video, PG-13
Adventure, Drama, Fantasy
System: Masks
Content Notices: n/a
Description
Inspired by Indigenous Brazilian folklore, “Beneath the Surface” is a story of five cousins — their lives rooted in a distant land. The cousins are beckoned back to their shared ancestral village. What they envision as a mere reunion spirals into a mystical journey when they meet the village elders. The coastal village's connection to its ancestry has started to wane, and the five find that they have been chosen for a sacred task: Travel to where your ancestral spirits lay, and bridge the widening chasm between the living and the spirits.
Liberatory Artistic Practices
“Beneath the Surface” prioritized own-voice stories and inspirations at the table, and in production. All participants are either immigrants or children of immigrants, inside and outside the USA, and came together to tell a story of what generationally-passed-down culture and expectations actually mean for the “next” generation. Authentic voices represented numerous cultures around the world, and reflections of real-world culture and beliefs (especially indigenous in Brazil) reflected in food, gender, spoken word, art, expressions, and more. Storyboard production also worked for months with the Game Master, pre-recording, to ensure that the story could be consumed just as heavily as it was being expressed (through dramaturgy). Not one person worked alone, and instead this show was created by and for a community that is not represented nearly enough in the TTRPG industry.