WILMINGTON, Vt. — Just after sundown on a Thursday in early December, Chris Harrison — host of “The Bachelor” and its spinoffs — stood in a mountaintop lodge in this Vermont ski town. The cavernous room had been draped in the fashion typical to “Bachelor” cocktail parties; candles burned, sequined pillows beckoned, and a stocked bar stood at the ready. Mr. Harrison’s eyes scanned a cluster of sofas, all of them at that moment, empty.

“Who’s not here for the right reasons?” he said, invoking a “Bachelor” catchphrase as he looked out intensely at no one.

Mr. Harrison was rehearsing a scene for the ABC series, “The Bachelor Winter Games,” in which he would ask the cast to choose someone to send home that night. His script was familiar to any fan of the franchise, except for a tweak to the ending. Tonight, Mr. Harrison went on, the eliminated contestants would be “on a plane — back to whatever country you came from.”

“Winter Games” — which will debut Feb. 13, in direct opposition to NBC’s prime-time coverage of the Winter Olympics in South Korea — combines 26 alumni from both domestic and international versions of “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette.” The twist is a first for the franchise, and a gamble. “Bachelor” shows tend to feature the same faces, with talent hopping from one of the flagship shows to the other, then surfacing again on a spinoff, like the bacchanalian “Bachelor in Paradise.” With “Winter Games,” the franchise is challenging a fan base not particularly open to change to embrace a cast filled with contestants from outside the United States (and some who don’t speak much English).