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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Little Boffer Con 2025* | August 30th, 2025 | Westford Regency, Westford, MA | Cameron Betts | None | |
| NELCO 2024 with Little Boffer Con* | August 17th, 2024 | Westford Regency, Westford, MA | Cameron Betts | None | |
| Wintercon* | December 17th, 2024 | Boxboro Regency, Boxboro MA | Cameron Betts | None | |
| NELCO 2019, with Little Boffer Con | July 20, 2019 | Holiday Inn, Boxborough, MA | ~100 | Cameron Betts | None |
| NELCO 2018, with Little Boffer Con | July 14, 2018 | Holiday Inn, Boxborough, MA | ~100 | Adina Schreiber | None |
| NELCO 2017 | August 20, 2017 | Holiday Inn, Boxborough, MA | ~50 | Cameron Betts | None |
| NELCO 2016 | August 19-21, 2016 | Holiday Inn, Boxborough, MA | ~40 | Stephen Kohler | Adrift on the Starry Sky |
| NELCO 2015 | August 28-30, 2015 | Camelot Cohousing, Berlin, MA | 52 | Stephanie Davis | A Second Chance for Wings |
| NELCO 2014 | July 18-20, 2014 | Chelmsford Radisson, Chelmsford, MA | 46 | Cameron Betts | This Time For Sure: Boris Badenov’s Gulag for Unrepentant Children |
| NELCO 2013 | August 9 – 11, 2013 | Chelmsford Radisson, Chelmsford, MA | ~40 | Dave Kapell | The Night Queen Princess Fluffykins Passed |
| NELCO 2012 | July 20 – 22, 2012 | Chelmsford Radisson, Chelmsford, MA | ~30 | Dave Kapell | The Barbecue |
*= ran as a joint NELCO and Winter Boffer Con event