NELCO Conferences

The New England LARP Conference (NELCO) is a weekend-long multi-tradition event focused on the craft of LARP. NELCO is a direct outgrowth of experiences at Intercon.

Over the years, many Intercons have also hosted panels and discussions. The "Thursday Thing" experiment started with Intercon J, adding a pre-convention extra day, with panels and workshops. The demand for more topics, more panels, and more workshops has grown as Intercon attendance has grown. LARPers love to talk about LARP. Intercon, with its diverse crowd of attendees, is a great place to get a good mix of LARPers with a diverse set of experiences — and it now regularly schedules discussions, panels, and workshops about the craft of LARP.

But what if those people were invited to come together just to talk about LARP? Would enough people be interested?

NEIL thought this was a great experiment, in line with some of the other LARP conferences in the world. Furthermore, few people were willing to give up a LARP-filled Intercon weekend in order to write a Build Your Own Game - but there was a precedent for running BYOGs outside of Intercon. NELCO was born.

The most dangerous thought that you can have as a creative person is to think that you know what you're doing, because once you think you know what you're doing you stop looking around for other ways of doing things and you stop being able to see other ways of doing things. You become blind.

Bret Victor, "The Future of Programming", quoted in the LARP 101 BYOG seminar

NELCO is a weekend where LARP designers, writers, GMs, players, costumers, gadgeteers, artists, and other creative people come together to talk about the theory and practice of LARP of all flavors. There's always an eclectic mix of clever LARPers from different backgrounds, who love to talk about their hobby, their passion, and their experiences. Some of them get together for the weekend to create, write, and run a brand new LARP during a Build Your Own Game (BYOG) workshop.

We want to learn what you can teach us. We want to teach us what we know. This is how new and better LARP is born. Come join us at the next NELCO.

Conference Date Location Attendance Chair BYOG LARP Written That Weekend
July 20, 2019 Holiday Inn, Boxborough, MA ~100 Cameron Betts None
July 14, 2018 Holiday Inn, Boxborough, MA ~100 Adina Schreiber None
August 20, 2017 Holiday Inn, Boxborough, MA ~50 Cameron Betts None
August 19-21, 2016 Holiday Inn, Boxborough, MA ~40 Stephen Kohler Adrift on the Starry Sky
August 28-30, 2015 Camelot Cohousing,
Berlin, MA
52 Stephanie Davis A Second Chance for Wings
July 18-20, 2014 Chelmsford Radisson, Chelmsford, MA 46 Cameron Betts This Time For Sure: Boris Badenov's Gulag for Unrepentant Children
August 9 - 11, 2013 Chelmsford Radisson, Chelmsford, MA ~40 Dave Kapell The Night Queen Princess Fluffykins Passed
July 20 - 22, 2012 Chelmsford Radisson, Chelmsford, MA ~30 Dave Kapell The Barbecue