This is for a cyberpunk FATE game.
The idea is for them to be blank on the face and as the players make up their characters and play the game, they can earn fate points for writing NPCs on these cards, parents, brothers, sisters, childhood friends, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, college buddies, co-workers, former co-workers, love interests, neighbors, flat-mates, enemies, rivals, etc.
The idea being that players can put an NPC on a card if they really liked him or her or it, or if they want to see something like that come up. And the GM doesn't have to make up new NPCs since the players can be surprised to discover they share some interests with an enemy, or that their beloved uncle is unreasonable and racist or something.
In essence, this replaces the cyberpunk lifepath kind of thingie because I always felt that lifepath didn't do a good job of connecting the characters to the world around them. You rolled on a few tables and quickly forgot about them because your character is a lone wolf, he hasn't seen his parents in years and doesn't have friends outside his team and love is for less chromey dudes, etc.
But this way, those people come up because the GM has a stack of them next to him at the gaming table. "And the dude that got the datafile before you even broke in this evening is... [deals a card] your dad. Wow. I guess there's a lot you never knew about your dad."
And if the players need fate points in a hurry, all they have to do is add to the stack. (GM: "What did you write one here? Denske?" Player: "That's my guy's digital cyber-pet from when he was a kid." GM: "I might deal this as an enemy. I'll give you the fate point if you are seriously OK that when you meet this guy again a programming glitch might have mutated him into an artificially intelligent computer virus.")
Nice idea
I really like ideas that link characters back into one another.
1. It reinforces a bond between the characters, a bit like the TV show heroes, the characters are so interconnected that it was simply a matter of fate that they would end up together in some way.
2. It brings the world beyond the immediate characters into the foreground, it can sometimes get a bit melodramatic, but having an NPC as an ally to one character and an enemy to another sets a level of tension within the group. These are more interesting stories (in my opinion) and since I feel the essence of roleplaying is about making choices, the mechanisms really makes the choices meaningful to the characters and the players involved. It's a bit deeper than just A) shoot the bad guys... B) steal their data/technology.
3. The players have a more vested interest in what's happening around them, because they've helped to create it through the story and through their fate.
4. It's less GM work to draw a card than to manually create dozens of NPCs who might just end up slaughtered.