Ginger Stampley, at Perverse Access Memory asks two questions, this time, in her 71st Game WISH column. The second is:
Do you rely on the NPC as presented, or are you usually looking "between the lines" to figure the elements that are hold-backs? Do you care that the NPCs might have as many conflicted qualities as the PCs? Should a game really revolve around the PCs in every respect, including a certain "artificial" quality to the secondary cast? Or are you happier if the NPCs are "sticky"?
These are easier questions to answer-- but then, I always find playing easier than GMing, too.
Pure and simple, whether I look between the lines for hidden qualities of NPCs depends on the GM running the characters. If I think that there's anything more than the obvious behind the NPCs in general (as there so obviously is in House of Cards) and the GM(s) in question are any good at it, then, yes, I'll read between the lines.
It's fun, if the GM does it right. It's also, speaking from experience, hard to run a game where the NPCs are real enough to do that. If the GM isnt' doing that, or is doing it badly, I won't bother. I won't enjoy the game as much,
either, but that doesn't necessarily imply that I would stop playing.
I do think that the game should tend to revolve around the PCs, though. The word 'tend,' there, implies to me that some of the NPCs, even some of the major NPCs, should be conflicted. They should be real people. On the other hand, it's not hard to go a little overboard with it: If every major NPC is horribly conflicted about some known issue... enh. At least phase the conflictedness in and out of the storyline as appropriate, so that they're not all conflicted at the same bloody time.
Those conflicted NPCs should get a chance to resolve themselves, too. There comes a point in the arc of all NPCs (just as for all PCs and for all characters in long running fiction in general) where failure to resolve some conflict one way or the other starts to strain any sympathy and interest. I can utter the Eight Deadly Words about an NPC, too.
Trying to put this succinctly, a given NPC shouldn't upstage a given PC all that often... and the NPCs as an ensemble shouldn't upstage the PCs as an ensemble, either.