Games can come from the most amusing of places. In one meeting among the troupe at Amble Studio, someone said something we needed to capture. We’ve been using Trello, a platform that helps teams organise and prioritise tasks they need to accomplish.

“Chuck it in the Trello,” said Ambler Logan. Or rather, that’s what he tried to say. What actually came out of his mouth was “Truck it in the Cello!”

After a good laugh, fellow troupe member Hailey said in jest “That sounds like a good idea for a game.”

It was a joke, but the instant she said it, Logan’s game designer cogs started turning.

Logan am very interested in exploring the platforms on which storytelling and collaborative games are played. At the dawn of tabletop roleplaying, it was very much an in-person event. Friends would gather at someone’s house, roll dice, and tell epic stories together.

As time moved on and the internet exploded, there has been a shift to online platforms and connecting people over distance. The COVID-19 pandemic has only increased this shift. There are online platforms to play tabletop games, and more are being made and refined all the time. These platforms often include ways to roll dice online for everyone to see, and ways to draw maps or see images in real-time, while communicating via video or text chat. These are platforms made for existing games.

But what if games were instead made for existing platforms? And so we return to ‘Truck it in the Cello’, or ‘Truck It’ for short. What would a collaborative game that used only tools and software available in Trello look like? And so began a fun design challenge. How can tickets be used? How about labels, and the ‘Join’ feature? Logan had many ideas, and jotted them down in, you guessed it — a Trello board.

Soon after, he brought it to Amble, excited at this new challenge. What emerged as we spoke about it was a realisation: ‘Truck It’ presents more than just an opportunity for a new way to play together. It could be the start of a new way to teach teams about teamworking platforms and software.

Think about it — teaching someone a new platform like Trello or Miro or Slack is rarely easy, quick or fun. Learners can feel bombarded by new information, get bored by being talked at for an extended period of time, or get nervous about having to use this new thing in the workplace. Teaching someone through a game rather than a presentation has the power to change all of that.

First of all, the invitation to ‘a game that will teach you how to use Trello effectively as a team’ sounds a lot more inviting than ‘a seminar on how to use Trello effectively as a team’. Right away the ‘learners’ become ‘players’ and are more likely to be excited and engaged.

Secondly, rather than having information dumped on them all at once, players actively use Trello, putting their learning into practice immediately. The fact that this practice will be a game with a story and a goal provides motivation and drive to be actively involved rather than a passive listener. Being actively involved with team mates in a collaborative manner means co-workers are already getting to know each other and have experience manipulating Trello as a team in real-time. So when they go to work the next day, it doesn’t feel like a huge leap from theory to practice because they’ve already been in action.

Finally, the Amble troupe knows from decades of helping teams collaborate, learning how to operate these teamwork tools is only the first step. Teamwork is a social activity; we do it together. Too often tools like Trello can be given to one member of the team to manage, while everyone else barely interacts with it. The social nature of this teamwork is thus diminished, and this can have other, lingering side effects. What really makes tools like Trello sing is when a team develops its own culture and processes around how to use that tool for their own needs. Learning a tool through a game could be a great way to embed a sense of play and exploration from the start, making successful adoption all the more likely.

And we’re keen to find out if we’re right! Many of our games and offerings explore the boundaries between collaboration, games and work, and what might happen if those boundaries collide. This collision course we’re on has already led to exciting insights and new pathways, we can’t wait to see what else we learn!

So keep an eye out for more on ‘Truck it in the Cello’, a Trello based collaborative storytelling game where you all play musicians committing theft, and then smuggling your prize out of the theatre in a cello case!

This article was written by Logan Timmins on Wurundjeri land. Amble Studio pays respect to Elders past, present and emerging and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded.

Banner image by Ira Selendripity, free to use on Unsplash.com.