The RPG Houses of the Blooded (by John Wicke) had an interesting take on the typical NRP. As opposed to CTE's point, it is very heavily focused on the leader. The setting resembles a medieval feudal system, in which the general philosphy is that if you can't stop others from taking something from you, you never deserved to own it in the first place. Players are nobles - ranked as either barons/baronesses, counts/countesses, marquises or dukes/duchesses. Two games would be played at once - one of the nation, and one of the character. The characters would often be going to balls or hunts, or hosting their own. It is here that the real games would be played - with the law that a contract signed in blood was always binding (there was no punishment, technically. Someone who broke a Blood Contract would, due to the magic involved, immediately have the word "traitor" burned into their forehead), there was a lot of potential for alliances an betrayals, as well as Romance and Revenge (which are capitalised for cultural reasons which would take a while to explain, but it's worth pointing out that in their language, both words were spelt the same, with only a slightly different pronunciation).

I got a little off-topic there, but the idea is that a typical nrp and an entirely seperate, more individual rp would be occuring at the same time.