Lately I've been thinking about developing a party game called Expatriates.

There'd be a variety of cities that could be picked at the beginning of the game. They'd be places like Paris, or Berlin, or Dubai; a foreign city where an American could end up. Then each player would be pick a card out of the profile deck. The card would detail what the player was doing in this city. Possible reasons could be things like they traveled there for their job, or followed their spouse, or they've decided to blow their trust fund in a "romantic" city. Things like that.

Players wouldn't be able to immediately tell each other who they were, or why they've ended up in the chosen city, but answers would come out over the course of the game. Everyone would have to mull around, talking to their fellow players, staying in character. "I'm looking for an English speaking gynecologist," one might say to another. And, if they were lucky, the player they were talking to would have pulled a card that made them a gynecologist. Or, "That's so funny, because that house has been in my family for generations, but I'd never come here until last year." The people would talk, and drink, and be bonded together by the fact that they've finally found other Americans in this foreign city. Fellow strangers in this strange land.

Really, at heart, Expatriates is a social networking game. Like an adult version of that game Murder that little kids play, where you go around shaking people's hands, and the one murderer in the group scratches the inside of your palm, signaling they're the murderer.

If things really caught on, real expatriates in real cities overseas would play the game, only using their real lives.

I just think it'd be a fun game, y'know?