there was a good question in GLC about starting a meta and my answer got too long
(This post was originally posted on Cohost.)
This question came up in the Green Level Clearance Discord server:
For those of you who have successfully started a meta where there was none before, how did you go about it? What helped? What resources did you turn to?
Finally, my area of expertise! I was responsible for the growing of the scene at University of Warwick (UK), which is at the point of having enough people for consistent small tournaments (roughly 8 people at any one time, as people graduate so we lose them at a reasonable rate). This scene also spawned four NSG members1, which bewilders me to this day.
I have four five short shortish points which will hopefully help those considering making their own metas, which are below the cut2!
1. Build the scene within a gaming space.
It's far easier to persuade people who are already in games to try out Netrunner than it is new people who don't usually play games. This could be your local board games group or some nearby Magic: The Gathering group looking for other games to try out. You'll hopefully have one at e.g. your nearby local game store or university society.
This also means you'll hopefully have an advertising channel: a Facebook group or Discord server or whatever that is used by that gaming space. This is key for getting the word out. You can use this to gently suggest that people try out System Gateway, for example!
2. Make it clear that Netrunner is played and how new players can get playing.
When people find out about the game - whether by approaching the table you're playing at, or by asking around when they've tired of Magic, or some other reason - make it easy for them to learn. Offer to teach them (or point them towards someone else in the community who can teach them), as it's far easier to learn interactively than just by reading. Gateway is frankly the best thing to happen to Netrunner in terms of getting people into the game, so use it!
You may also find running a new player event helpful, especially if you don't yet have enough people for a tournament - treat it as a fun afternoon for people to learn and get a couple of games in, and maybe provide some promo cards. We had some events during the university's Welcome Week (the week before the lectures start) which definitely helped, but wasn't the sole source of new players. Also make it clear how people can engage with the game after this event.
Finally, when advertising Netrunner events, add on a cute message like "oh but if you want to learn Netrunner, ask me". This means that people can look at an event even if they don't play and possibly consider learning the game because the event itself sounds cool!
3. Give new players the chance to have fun in a tournament setting.
Run tiny tournaments in small formats - Startup is great here, and before it existed we did stuff like Core + Reign and Reverie. Make it crystal clear that proxying is good and actively encouraged3, that there are deckbuilding resources like NetrunnerDB, and that community members are happy to help find decks!
This lets players engage with the game at their own comfort level: some people will dive into deckbuilding like a goblin and produce twenty awful decks4, while others will not have as much time so will need to be lent decks to play with. It's important that the game is accessible to those with not much time as well as those willing to throw days of their life into the game, as there are lots of people like that - those with kids, busy jobs, an impending PhD thesis (looking at nobody in particular with that last one) - it's a fun game even without committing months of your life to it.
Try to run these tournaments somewhat consistently - tournaments a few times a year is a nice way to bring the community together. Also make sure victory is within reach for new players: don't play brutal tier 0 decks, and have participation prizes. I personally make sure all new players get additional participation prizes at their first ever tournament.
You can also go elsewhere for tournaments! Don't feel you have to run loads of tournaments - if you're lucky enough to be in an area where there are other metas in nearby cities, talk to your community about going on day trips to other cities. The UK is very lucky in that it has a lot of cities with Netrunner metas (which I mainly attribute to the success of UK Games Expo in the past few years), so if one of them is advertising a tournament on AlwaysBeRunning then you can always pop down as a group to try and best them!
4. Show people the joy of Netrunner.
Enjoy the game! If people see you having fun, they'll be curious - make them think "oh this games looks strange but cool, what's it like?" and they'll approach the table. Get new people telling stories, having conversations like: "how did your game go?" "oh it was really cool! I stole an agenda through a Brân with no credits left after taking a risk by letting its first subroutine fire" - because that's how we grew up with Netrunner and how we're still playing today.
5. Bonus point: this does not all hinge on you.
Something that Fern suggested making clear when it was proofreading this post: as you get people into the game, they will be able to get more people into the game via word of mouth or trying it out with their friends. You don't have to teach literally everyone that enters your community, run every tournament and so on. In my case, the aforementioned "not NSG member but may as well be" probably taught about half the people in my local community, and while I ran most of the tournaments there were some which weren't ran by me. Talk to your community and make sure stuff happens, but it does not have to be just you putting in all of the work.
Anyway that's all I've got to say about it. Feel free to ask any follow-up questions/roasts/compliments in the comments, or the Discord thread that this post is linked in.
Arguably one of their partners is basically an NSG member given the amount of time he's put into the design of the game, but he isn't officially a member. I'm also not a member either, so it's not like I told people to apply to NSG or anything which makes me even more curious how this all happened.↩
Below the cut being a part of Netrunner tournaments that I am very familiar with↩
We did this in our scene even while FFG was at the helm of the game.↩
Nobody builds a good deck on their first try. Some people even run Ghost Branch, looking at noone in particular↩