Coming-of-age stories are an internationally beloved sub-genre of media that focuses on the crossover from childhood into adulthood. Through the protagonists, the audience explores themes like loss of innocence, cultural or societal rites of passage, and self-discovery. More importantly, this type of storytelling provides the audience with insight into other people’s lives, or a mirror for their own life experience, and how our childhood influences our adulthood. For the fifth season of 5 GMs in a Trenchcoat, that rite of passage is baked into a road trip in a beat-up van with a unicorn painted on it, and their road to self-discovery is generously seasoned with paranormal anomalies. “From Inside the Tent” centers on three teens living in America in the 1980s, going on a road trip that their parents cryptically refer to as “the best summer of their lives.” The team’s Kickstarter campaign remains active until September 18, 2025.
Audio: Great Quality, a few moments of peaking, headphone-worthy soundscaping
Vibes: Nope, Gravity Falls, Scooby Doo, X Files, Gremlins, Stranger Things
Genre: Horror, Coming-Of-Age
Number of Episodes Review is based on: 3
Campaign Length: Long-term campaign, at least 50 episodes
System: Kids on Bikes 2nd Edition
Average Episode time: 1 Hour
Accessibility: Content Warnings at the beginning of the episodes.
Platforms: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, Website
Language: English
Kickstarter Campaign: Open until September 18, 2025
Shifting Decades
The 1980s marked the beginning of a new era with the return of blockbusters — big-budget films made by major studios that are financially successful and socially popular. As entertainment transitioned into a digital age, production costs became more accessible for low-budget films to reach a broader audience. Well-known films like Star Wars, The Goonies, and Top Gun remain cherished among film lovers.
Kids on Bikes 2nd Edition complements this podcast as it is specifically made for the 1980s, when the idea of adventure for urban kids was taking their bikes out around town and getting up to no good. 5 GMs shifts the system into drive by trading the bikes for a beat-up van and expanding the small town into a full-blown American road trip.
Rather than using existing “tropes” (similar to classes in other TTRPGs) from the system, the characters are all homebrewed and grow throughout the series.
“… Part of the purpose of the tropes and what’s great about them is that they do create this sort of monolithic capability of play. And what I think is so important about our characters is one of the stories that we’re telling is that people of color are not monolithic and are diverse in the ways in which they exist,” said Adam Gonzales, the Game Master (GM) for this campaign.
The kids we are introduced to in the first episode of the series are wholesome and sweet, sprinkled with clues to the three teenagers driving down the highway in episode three. It’s important to remember that the 80s marked the strategic white conservative reaction to the civil rights movement by electing Ronald Regan. Despite the regressive politics targeted towards marginalized communities, notable progress continued through the tireless efforts of the people actively persecuted. This includes: Black Entertainment Television (BET) was founded by Robert L. Johnson, NAATA started Silk Screens on PBS, making Asian American stories more accessible to a greater American Audience, and more opportunities arose for Latino and Hispanic roles in the industry. In recent years, marginalized artists have increasingly used the horror genre to tell their own stories of prejudice. Recent examples include Get Out, Sinners, and Nope.
As much as the world around them shapes the protagonists, the children they were live on through the unique adversity tokens, another mechanic in Kids on Bikes. Adversity tokens are gained when you fail a roll and can be used to improve subsequent rolls, active “strengths,” or to ignore a “fear.” Because the team records in person, they were able to use a variety of small toys as their tokens. “I was the dinosaur kid growing up, and so I had them on our bookshelf, and when we were getting ready to play, I remembered I hadn’t gotten tokens yet […] and so I got these,” Adam said in our interview, holding up small rubber dinosaur figures that you can buy in a tube at hobby stores. These small toys, a sort of currency they used as kids, serve as an anchor to their childhood bond while serving the game mechanically.
Golden Trout Cabin
Episode One: Summer Camp of ‘83
Episode One is set in 1983, where our protagonists finally get a taste of freedom from their parents at summer camp. The summer camp, Camp Hidden Falls in Hidden Falls Regional Park, is only the first of many beautiful settings for the campaign. Adam confirmed that there will be many National and Regional Parks featured as the group travels saying, “I traveled and camped a lot when I was younger, and so it was very important to me to express how liminal a lot of America is, but also how amazing America is or could be if we allowed it to go back to its natural beauty.”
Adam delivers a delightful range of characters in episode one. We meet awkward teen camp counselors, like Ashley Redding, the counselor for the Golden Trout cabin that our protagonists join. She is the perfect depiction of the goody-goody camp counselor who secretly reads smut and loves icebreakers. The protagonist’s cabin mate, Lilah Rodrigues, is my favorite character. A spunky, short, and unapologetic girl who makes it her goal to make her cabinmates “winners.” The way the players interact with Lilah won me over. They genuinely are kind and approached her with awe rather than judgment.
The team paints a nostalgic picture of summer camp. Despite their initial plans for rebellion, Amanda and Javi oblige their parents’ requests to run laps and study, and Zeke tries out activities he didn’t think he would enjoy. Later in the summer, the campers go deep into the woods and into a clearing to gaze at the stars. The night takes a terrifying paranormal turn that ends with Zeke’s quick thinking, quickly becoming just another fantastic tale of summer camp.
Episode Two: Summer Camp of ‘84
Episode two takes place the next summer at the same summer camp. Javi’s dad has more confidence that he will continue running laps since he was able to see the progress he made last summer, but Javi knows this may be his last summer at camp. Zeke starts to get into music and shows more confidence. Amanda’s mom is not letting up, doubling the workload from last year.
It doesn’t take long at all for curiosity to lead them to the field where they experienced the paranormal activity to find a large concrete recreation center. At night, several of the campers sleepwalk towards the new recreation center, but Amanda manages to come out of it. They spend the rest of the night investigating the building, finding that it’s a normal park center, if you ignore the scientist running experiments in the middle of the night, who seems to have lost track of how long he’s been there. The night ends with them being escorted out with armed guards, clearly putting them on edge.
Episode Three: On the Road
For episode three, we jump ahead in time to 1987, the audience puts together the puzzle of what likely happened since the last summer camp, and we finally see our protagonists at the cusp of adulthood.
Zeke has picked up working on cars with his dad and has adopted the very van that took him to his first summer of camp. Tension between him and his dad seems to have developed, as his dad shows some frustration with Zeke, not fully understanding where Zeke is trying to go with his life.
The expectation of Javi’s father finally outpaced Javi, who we find wearing a knee brace. He haunts a lonely house, no goodbye from his father, except for a note he left behind.
Amanda has adopted the 80s goth aesthetic, now going by the name Clementine. Clemintine, preparing for her first year of college and the main reason for this road trip, is still being fussed over by her mother.
What happened over the previous few years, since that last summer, has drastically affected the group and remains mostly a mystery to the audience. For now. While they have to reconcile with their growing pains, they continue to be plagued by strange phenomena. This time, seemingly taking advantage of Javi’s vulnerable and lonely state of mind. They manage to continue on their journey, dismissing it as a deja vu, and drive into their “totally normal” road trip.
Lasting Friendships
Ezequiel “Zeke” Baldwin (played by Jesse Espinoza, he/him) fills the role of the new kid in town, a role that comes with both acceptance and anxiety in fitting in. Zeke is the quintessential scout, over-prepared for a month in the woods. Later in the introductory episodes, Zeke becomes the shoulder for Clem to lean on when Javi is not there. We are also introduced to Zeke’s father, a mechanic who wants to connect with his son but struggles to relate. Adam explained further, “We’re both part Mexican, but we’re two to three generations removed from the parents or great grandparents that came here from different portions of the world. […] As hard as they might try to relate, it is impossible to relate as an immigrant parent and a dreamer or a born here child.” Zeke’s teenage persona fit the rock and roll aesthetic of the 80s, bearing long hair, band shirts, and a laid-back attitude. Kim and Tanlynn strongly implied during our interview that Zeke tends to get them into trouble. “What’s kind of funny in the beginning is that my character never saw any of the stuff, but like the first few episodes, and so they’re all just like, oh, this weird shit’s happening, and Zeke’s just like, oh, okay,” Jesse added while reminiscing about the episodes they have recorded so far.
Amanda “Clementine” Tachibana (played by Kim Tsuyuki, she/her) is introduced in the backseat of her parents’ car in a haze of anxiety. Amanda’s mother is the kind of strict parent who genuinely wants what’s best for her daughter, but the pressure she puts on Amanda is crushing. Her father tries to be a mediator but remains compliant with the strict parenting. When asked how much of herself is baked into her character, Kim explained, “A lot of Clem is just me when I went to high school and the pressure of doing well, um, living in an Asian household. […] The first few episodes, when Adam was playing Clem’s mom. There were several points where I had to be like, all right, really quick break, because that brought me back to being 16 or 17 talking to my mom about college.” Kim displays the complexity of what growing up with high expectations can do to self-confidence and identity. We only get a small sample of Clementine’s adoption of the goth subculture, but Kim nails the aesthetic. We also get glimpses of the character bonds, another Kids on Bikes mechanic, between Amanda and Javi. They use the bond mind readers, which allow them to read each other’s minds with a single glance. This makes their strained relationship in episode 3 even more devastating.
Javier ”Javi” O’Riley (played by Tanlynn Morgan, they/she) is described by his physicality, because it’s how the world perceives him. “He’s a very physical, or at least his father wants to be a very physical character,” Tanlynn clarified when I asked about how Javi is specifically described. “And then going into like physical attributes, he’s, he’s a young black man. That’s like the first thing you’ll notice when you see him. That’s the first thing people notice when they see me.” Tanlynn portrays Javi as someone who struggles with his identity and separating himself from the expectations of society and his own parents. Javi is so deeply layered with trauma that I could not do him justice in a short review. Tanlynn manages to squeeze so much into only three episodes, suggesting adults look to him as a protector, the pressure to be an athlete, a lack of conviction in agency and control in his own future, and a sincere desire to meet expectations (even to his own detriment). Javi has a terrifying moment in episode three that alludes to deep feelings of abandonment.
Taking a turn behind the Game Master (GM) screen is Adam Gonzales, he/they. Adam puts his love of the 80’s on full display, taking the time to introduce the team to the coming-of-age film Stand by Me as well as a full presentation, including “weird snacks.” Adam’s carefully crafted cinematic moments mirror classic horror films, such as using distant camera shots to suggest the characters are being watched and switching to the characters’ perspective to emphasize isolation. They stretch the tension in scenes like a rubber band, slowly stretched more and more until it snaps, leaving the audience just as uncomfortable in its absence as it was in its initial presence.
5 GM’s is edited by Kim Tsuyuki, who uses sound effects and atmosphere to support the weaving story. Her sound design leans into an Audio Drama while maintaining the narration by Adam. Effects, such as the buzzing of a fluorescent light, road noise, and the uneasy hum of electricity in a lab, support the uneasy atmosphere haunting the protagonists. I hope to hear the sound effects start to speak for themselves in future episodes, especially as the tension and horror of the series ramp up. She was also intentional with the absence of background noise. Kim explains, “There are some things that you need to just sit with and it in its entirety. Especially with them getting back together and the conversations they were having, it was really important to me to be like, you need to listen to this. And there’s nothing in the background to sugarcoat the weird air that’s between them all.”
Along the Road
5 GM’s plans for at least 50 episodes, making this their longest campaign yet. They have a long list of guest appearances featured in side stories that expand on the state of the paranormal activity throughout the states. I’m looking forward to this unique way to bolster the story, and I hope it will present more clues about the nature of the horrors our main characters face. These guests include: Connie Chang, Sea Thomas, Sam Langford, Taya Campbell Over, Masquewren, Juicy Garland, RahRah, Sadie Oakleaf, Mozzarelle “Moz”, Ian Grant, TheKellhop, Tatiana “Tot” Gefter, Vyn Vox, Spunky Taylor, Noah Bell, Gameratergirl “Ivy”, Feral Moonbeam, Rolling with Difficulty Crew, Grant Nordine, Kurohitsuki, Kendrick “Kendo” Smith, Taz, GM Justin, and Calamity.
From Inside the Tent tugs at the heartstrings and benefits from the performer’s real-life friendship to deliver a compelling coming-of-age horror. This season will strap listeners into a roller coaster of horror and teenage drama that celebrates 1980s film. America needs this kind of storytelling of marginalized perspectives and lives, and horror is a fitting genre to package it up. All while highlighting the beauty of the land that is often taken for granted. Don’t let the camp counselors catch you missing.
Images provided by 5 GMs in a Trenchcoat
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