International incident began as an attempt to capture the essence of the classic Avalon Hill game, Diplomacy, without requiring 8 hours of play time.

So what is the essence of Diplomacy? There is a lot to respect about Diplomacy: there are no dice, no cards, no randomly generated events at all. Moves are secretly recorded and then all released at once. Like a game of 7-way chess, it's just you, your opponents, and your respective wits. The essence of the game is in predicting what your opponents will do, and acting preemptively to counter them.

Diplomacy takes place on a map of Europe and I wanted to keep the international arena. The theme I decided on was espionage and I wrote the game with Jason Bourne and James Bond on my mind.

Once I had espionage on the mind I was reminded of another old boardgame: Conspiracy. There are elements of Conspiracy that I find very fascinating; primarily the rule that all of the pieces are free to be moved by the highest bidder. What this meant was that, if you weren't careful, you could move a piece into a compromising position only to see it suddenly turn on you.

What I didn't like about Conspiracy was all of the hidden math involved and the ease with which a player could accidentally, or purposefully, cheat.

International Incident sees a map of the world populated by spies. The game opens with vital pieces of information scattered about the map. Players take the roles of competing world leaders and must use all of their wits to coax the information back to their capitals. There are many alternate means of copying and moving information, some more direct than others, but for each method there is at least one way to counter it.

Players have a limited number of 'authority points' to spend on each turn and may use these authority points to issue orders to specific spies on the map. A spy will only take one action per turn and gives preference to the highest-authority-valued order, so players will have to decide between spreading their orders out over many spies or concentrating on one spy who is less likely to ignore the order.

Order sheets are filled out and then submitted anonymously. The spies' actions are then taken before the next turn begins. The first player to gather all 3 types of information in his capital, wins.

In my mind, International Incident remains unfinished, simply because I have not found a suitable test group to play the polished version. It is a game of pure strategy, and as such, requires players of a certain mentality. Tension builds on a subtextual level; battles of second-guessing are fought silently, and priorities are quickly stretched too thin to manage without concessions. It occurs to me that this describes Museum Caper Clue perfectly, and, like that game, International Incident will probably not resonate with the casual gamer.

I wanted to talk about this game but I don't think I'm ready to share the full rules online at this time.