Netrunner went to PAX Australia this year! Along with a crack team of volunteers from around the country, I ran the Null Signal Games booth TT1340. This blog post collects some of those experiences, lessons learned, and tips for others looking to show off Netrunner at a convention. It’s roughly chronological, but it doesn’t need to be.
Shipment from Dan-san: cards, merch and signage
When Myldside, Demus and I did our big Midnight Sun group-buy in August, we also ordered a bunch of stock for Null Signal Games to sell at Essen Spiel, SHUX and PAX Australia. This was quite a big outlay, but we were confident that the local resellers could handle a Stock Buy-Back. In the end we sold more Gateways and Ashes than planned.
Null Signal’s head of marketing DanB organized some sweet stand-up banners which arrived in time for the Australian Open of Netrunner in September. Everyone agreed that they looked fantastic.
Crash Space: the booth
DanB handled all of the arrangements for the booth, including paying the bills. We had a ‘Small’ booth this year and were full running demonstrations more or less all weekend. Some vollies suggested we could fill a larger booth and I don’t disagree. There is a conversation to be had about where the money is best spent.
Renting convention furniture is very expensive, so instead I bought a selection of basic blow-mould furniture at Bunnings (most of which I could return good as new afterwards). Our small booth came with 1x table and 2x chairs, which I supplemented with:
- 2x bench seats (for the ‘demonstrator’ side of the demo tables)
- 1x desk (for displaying product and point of sale)
- black cloth to cover the tables
One missing piece was some vertical shelving. This would use the limited booth space better and also increase the visual interest of our stand.
Recruiting Trip
Staffing was perhaps the most challenging part of organizing PAX. Everyone involved was not only volunteering but also spending a chunk of their PAX weekend doing Just One Thing when there is Lots To See And Do at PAX. A key hurdle for us to clear was confirming The Deal with badges: what the volunteers needed, what PAX/Null Signal provided, and what gaps need to be covered. In future I would like to give everybody much more clarity in advance. I would recommend anyone running a convention stand consider asking something like the following:
“How involved would you like to be in showing off Netrunner at this convention?”
- “I’ll do some pre-work and spend most of the weekend at the booth” = exhibitor badge
- “I’ll spend up to half of the weekend at the booth” = 3-day badge or tabletop badge
- “I’ll spend a couple of hours at the booth” = promos and thanks.
Each morning at PAX we had a new puzzle to solve to try to get our volunteers into the hall at a reasonable time. Giving each volunteer an ‘Exhibitor’ pass would solve this easily (if expensively). Better timetabling on my part would also save a lot of Legwork.
Work out shifts for the booth a bit better: the casual nature of what we had was good but if you know you need to be somewhere at a certain time then you can plan things for the show around it
Reece
Overall I had a great time and felt really lucky to be part of such a strong team of volunteers. Many of us hadn’t met before but everyone worked really well together and that seemed to show:
Within the booth, we looked out for each other, encouraging each other to take breaks, or not turn up at all if we didn’t feel well. It’s great to experience and support a cyberpunk game that has genuine punk behind it.
Albey
The Netrunner boothgang were friendly and forthcoming. I knew I could immediately attend a Melbourne event and hit the gamer’s groove running. My partner said something at the time which was relevant: unlike the other booths they don’t need to run wild marketing their product because they knew it stood up all on its own. There was something assuring about their confidence in the game.
Anthony ‘Felix’ Mallon
Well announced and planned, supportive crew, welcoming atmosphere, engaging customers, great fun.
Ben Finney
It’s always a bit nerve-wracking meeting friends from online. My experience with the Netrunner player base has been that everyone has exceeded expectations, and the same can be said for the team at the booth this year. People from all sorts of walks of life coming together around a game they enjoy. You’re be hard pressed to find a more inclusive bunch.
Essex
Everyone involved deserves massive kudos for just making it all happen.
Kror
Superheavy logistics: bump-in and bump-out
I was quite worried that bump-in and set-up would be a nightmare. Fortunately Reece is well versed in the ways of PAX and shared some insights in advance. Reina also dived in to help with setup on Thursday which lightened the load.
In the end setup and pack down was very smooth! I was able to park in the loading bays behind MCEC, and easily trolleyed our boxes of product the 100 or so meters to our stall. The hall had a pleasant buzz as consummate professionals and volunteers alike prepared for the show. Sunday’s bump-out had more of a hectic atmosphere as the Enforcers worked to clear the hall and folks already tired from a long weekend began packing their wares away. Due to a combination of everyone being awesome and having very little surplus stock, Ben and I were all done at 1830 Sunday!
Do not leave for your next convention without:
- A trolley or handcart. Each box of Netrunner cards weighs 5 kilograms and that is a lot of trips without a sweet set of wheels.
- A high-vis garment per person. Vests are cheap and readily available, but you will not be admitted into the hall without one. Forklifts are no joke.
- Some form of drape to ‘close’ your stall at night. Security seemed fine and theft unlikely but why invite trouble?
Exploratory Romp
The main activity for volunteers was demonstrating Netrunner: showing visitors a few turns or indeed a whole game. We had 2 demo seats occupied all weekend, and lent out a few demo decks for folks to play with in the free-play area.
Thoroughly enjoyed introducing the game to new players, especially running a few teaching games. On par with that was seeing so many old FFG-era players light up when seeing the game is still alive, run by a strong fan community and that the game is strong and growing.
Brad (thepatrician)
We also hosted a ‘learn to play’ meetup in the Ibis room on Friday. Interest seemed very strong, no doubt boosted by recent coverage of Netrunner. Setting up the demo decks in advance (with plenty of tokens) would save a few headaches on the day (and also make a useful community asset).
A great turnout and lots of enjoyment for teachers and newbies, but probably could have done with a few more hands on deck. Definitely something to keep in mind if we can wrangle more interest.
Kror
In hindsight, I think the learn to play event was the best thing we ran. The four of us could’ve been a lot more prepared, but we had our “what is a netrunner card” sheets and were ready for the 5 people waiting with us for the event to start. 10 rocked up within the next 20 minutes. Between playing games, redistributing tokens and shucking fresh System Gateway decks from the shrink-wrap, we gave so many people their first taste of netrunner.
Essex
Climactic Showdown: the Remote Server tournament
One of the exciting elements Null Signal invented for its 2022 convention season was Remote Server: a kind of ‘Worlds away from Worlds’ for those distant from the World Championship in Toronto. We vacillated a little over whether the tournament should be run in Standard or Startup format. Each had their own benefits:
- Standard: this is the flagship format, with the most competitive depth, and the format of the 2022 World Championship that we were celebrating.
- Startup: this is the format with the most players around Australia, helped by the much smaller buy-in of cards that are readily available.
We eventually settled on Standard format. We were unsure how many people would turn out: Saturday is the convention’s busiest day and we imagined the intersection of ‘going to PAX’ and ‘wants to spend a chunk of PAX playing a single game’ would be pretty small. That said, we have options in future to run events in the evening when there are fewer competing attractions.
Kror and Essex ran the Standard tournament and a few of our volunteers joined the fray. The 8 players duked it out over 3 rounds and Inactivist took the honours.
Great time, great people! I’m glad I was able to make time away from my exhibition to make the standard tourney. I haven’t played in person in years and it was great to meet the local community!
Asphyxia (Jenny)
The tournament ran quite smoothly start to finish, and it was SO GOOD to see a Gateway player having a blast playing against decks they had no chance of winning against.
Kror
I brought my decks to PAX as an afterthought thinking i ‘might’ jump in for a game, but it ended up 100% the best thing I did at PAX.
KennyG
Quest completed
One of several items that fell off my radar in the Mad Dash towards PAX was the format of Sunday’s Startup event. Inactivist pulled together a list of achievements for players to tick off in exchange for promos. Only a few players took on the quest, but those that did very engaged with it indeed! Next year I would give these out freely on Day 1 so that more players have more opportunities to complete them.
I absolutely loved the quest cards that we had ready to go and think these should be available from start-of-event through to end. We could be handing these out during demo games, the l2p session, etc. I think these were a definite win in concept, just without enough support/preparation.
Kror
It was great, we should of been promoting that over the whole weekend. I think we would have gotten more people keen to play some games if we did. It would also help with the people who played a game with us, brought the stuff, and then went to free play and built some decks and played some games.
Reece
Lacking Smartfabrics: on shirts
We had hoped to commission some black T’s with Null Signal branding and some pithy flavour text but the job got lost in the lead-up (not surprising given the 3 simultaneous events on 3 different continents). Personally I think that T-shirts are poor investment because:
- Sizing can be tricky so staff risk wearing ill-fitting clothes.
- Staff should wear a fresh T every day so you actually want to provide one per day.
- So many stalls are wearing branded Ts that they can blend in rather than stick out.
Having said that, many volunteers felt it was a shame that Ts didn’t happen. Reasons include:
- Having volunteers emblazoned with ‘ask me about Netrunner’ walking around the expo multiplies casual encounters and conversations beyond the booth.
- T-shirts are a nice keepsake and gift for volunteers.
- Some kind of uniform may make it easier for visitors to the stall to identify who to ask about Netrunner (especially if said T-shirts are emblazoned with ‘ask me about Netrunner’).
If I were running back the event, I would suggest a Localized Product Line in which:
- A local volunteer leads the uniform project.
- They ask Null Signal for graphics or design their own.
- Volunteers pick a garment from a standard list of known quality.
- The local volunteer gets agreement from Null Signal to reimburse uniform cost.
- They buy the shirts and get reimbursed from stall takings after the event.
- Surplus shirts can be given as prizes or sold as merch.
Reverse infection: Covid-19
It may go without saying that the Covid-19 pandemic is not over. Talking to hundreds of people about Netrunner is not the safest way to spend a long weekend in 2022, but we were glad that the convention went ahead. We managed our risks by:
- Supplying abundant masks for volunteers
- Having hand sanitizer gel and wipes at the demo table
- Encouraging volunteers to stay home if they felt unwell.
Feedback filter
The last thing I’d add is the value of visualizing the work that needs doing. Unfortunately a lot of the jobs were locked in my head or fleetingly visible in the #pax-aus channel of the ANRAUNZ Discord and not very accessible to others. Something like a Trello board would help the whole team see what needs doing and do it. Every volunteer proved themselves very capable of taking initiative and improvising across the weekend, so I would encourage organisers to delegate wherever possible. This might be the #1 tip, really!
So what do you think? Feel free to get in touch to share any thoughts here.
Sneakdoor Melbourne 
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