LARPs Near Me: Theater LARP Events in the Northeast

So, you’ve been doing lots of campaign boffer LARPs, but you’d like to try something new. Maybe you read about theater style LARPing in my previous blog post, and the idea of trying out a new genre without committing to a multi-year campaign is appealing. Or maybe you’d like to sample a character concept well outside your comfort zone, but only for a few hours. (NPCing for LARPs can offer that, but it’s not quite the same as PCing!) Maybe it’s time to see what short-form theater LARP events are out there! 
 
Luckily for those of us living in the Northeast of the US, we have a glut of events to choose from. Here are a few to check out!  (Location and price can change from year to year.  The prices and locations listed below are the most recent ones listed on the various event websites as of the publication of this post.) 

Intercon is the largest all-LARP annual convention in the US! It’s been growing steadily and is expecting over 500 attendees in 2026. There are over 150 LARPs on the schedule for the next convention, in a wide variety of genres and styles. While the majority are theater style (that is, no live combat) there are also a handful of one-shot boffer games as well. Most LARPs are about 4 hours in length, though some are as short as an hour, and others as long as six. 
 

Intercon also hosts Forum@Intercon, a series of panels, discussions, presentations, and workshops all about LARP. Forum events usually run Thursday evening to Friday morning. Intercon also hosts a variety of social events for LARPers to hang out and get to know one another out-of-character. There are meet-ups, dances, options for themed gatherings over meal breaks, and even an ice-cream social on Sunday evening to wind down the weekend. 
 

For meals, the convention has an arrangement with the hotel where the hotel provides concessions for sale in the con suite all weekend long. Most attendees eat there, though some will make their own food arrangements outside of the con. 

Most attendees rent hotel rooms on site. Intercon ticket prices change over the course of the year. There is an early bird price and also the price drops after the period where most of the games are full and game runners can get their tickets comped. 

A LARP Festival is sort of the spiritual successor to Festival of the LARPs, which used to run annually at Brandeis University in the spring. This year, it’s running at the Cambridge Community Center in Cambridge, MA. It’s a much smaller, more casual event than Intercon, with a much lower cost. In 2025, it hosted about fifteen LARPs. The LARPs run in a variety of spaces inside the community center. (There is at least one function room in the center, but I also played a LARP in a kindergarten class room at Festival.) Previously, it ran over one Saturday, but the event is expanding for 2026 to include both Saturday and Sunday.  

For meals, some attendees go off-site and get food at local restaurants, but many attendees partake in a large group order organized by con staff. The event space is within a short walking distance of a fun goth club, so a handful of attendees went to go dance late into the night after the last LARPs ended. 

The fee for this convention is pay-what-you-can, with a suggested price of $42 and options to pay a little extra and help make the event more financially accessible for others. 

Dice Bubble (Please note the website is still in the process of being updated as of the time of this post being written, so some of the text is still being updated from 2025.) 

Around the same size as A LARP Festival, Bubble runs in a hotel at Troy, NY. Previously, the Albany-area community ran two events per year, Dice Bubble and Time Bubble, but in the last few years, they condensed down to a single annual event. It hosts primarily theater style LARPs over Saturday and Sunday. Last year it hosted 15 LARPs over two days for about 50 attendees.  

For meals, attendees often eat at the restaurant inside the hotel, or visit or get take out from one of the local restaurants.  

Summer LARPing is an annual event that runs in July in a hotel in Boxboro, MA. It started as a humble event with only a handful of LARPs running in space offered by Worcester Polytech, but it has been growing quickly in the last few years and last year hosted between 45 and 50 LARPs with over 200 attendees. It hosts primarily theater style LARPs, though I have seen at least one LARP with boffer combat on the schedule! 

For meals, the convention has an arrangement with the hotel to provide concessions throughout the weekend. Some meals require purchasing a ticket in advance, others can be paid for on site. And of course some attendees eat at the hotel restaurant or go off site for food. 

This LARP offers  a “pay what you can” option as well as suggested prices if you’d like to donate extra to help make the event more financially accessible for others. 

The Greater Boston LARP Society, or GBLS, is an organization that runs short LARPs in the Greater Boston area. They try to make LARPing as accessible as possible, keeping costs minimal and running events in public spaces (usually near public transportation). They try to run about one event per month. If you’d like to be kept informed about their upcoming events, I recommend joining their mailing list. Meals are not usually part of the event, but attendees will often arrange an optional group outing to a local restaurant post-game to have a little extra social time and talk about the LARP they just played. 

This organization uses  a variety of spaces, including function rooms in public libraries, community centers, and public parks (weather permitting!)  All GBLS events are free, but officers will announce a suggested donation at individual events to help cover the costs of space rental. 

 
NELCO and LBC While these events don’t quite fit in the same category, I feel I would be remiss if I didn’t include the New England LARP Conference and Little Boffer Con.  These are two events that run simultaneously, basically across the hall from one another in hotel function rooms to enable cross-pollination. They run annually, usually in the summer. (Dates for 2026 have not been announced yet as of this post’s publication.) NELCO is a day of discussion and presentations all about LARP theory -- creating, running, and playing LARPs of any and all styles and genres, as well as running LARP conventions and developing LARP communities. Little Boffer Con is a collection of one-shot boffer LARPs, generally of the lit-form style (that is, characters are pre-written by the LARP staff and players are cast into those roles by staff via casting questionnaires.) 

There are no official meal options, but attendees often arrange group outings or group delivery orders from nearby restaurants.  NELCO/LBC uses a pay-what-you-can model, with a suggested price of $50 per LARP you PC, or $25 for general admission if you only plan to NPC for the LARPs and/or attend NELCO events.