The True Campaign Model Is A Perpetual Gaming Machine

Let's start putting things together. Quoting fellow #BroSR people, Jeffro put a summary of the core elements of the True Campaign Model the other day, and I'll quote that below:

• 1:1 Timekeeping: The game world is tied to the real-world calendar. For each day that passes in the real world, a day passes in the game world. This may sound strange, but it turns out to be foundational to everything that the #BrOSR does. If you ever thought it was dumb that adventurers go from battling rats in sewers to assassinating demigods in a span of a couple weeks in contemporary games, rest easy. Gygax never intended the game to work that way!
• Patron Players: You may have noticed that high-level characters don’t really do much except give out quests and missions to the player characters in conventional games. The #BrOSR hands these roles over to players that don’t necessarily even show up to game sessions. What is mere scenery in most other games turns into a constantly developing backdrop that influences player character activities in countless ways.
• 1:10 Scaling (aka Chainmail scale battles): — #BrOSR campaigns spontaneously generate exciting battles that integrate individual player characters and large army factions. Because D&D rules derive from a medieval miniatures game, it is trivial to resolve them without coming up with variant systems. It has never been easier to find, develop, and keep wargame opponents than with this approach to campaigning.
• An “always on” campaign made up of multiple interacting Braunsteins: #BrOSR campaigns create a framework that allows many different environments and situations to develop independently while all influence each other in surprising ways. Multiple Dungeon Masters find it trivial to coordinate their efforts and elite level patron players exercise many powers that are normally restricted to the DM.

Add Rules-As-Written and you have it all. The value of RAW is that it removes one of the biggest barriers to entry for new players, which is the insistence that players cannot learn and master the rules of the game because what they read in the manual need not be what happens at the table. It puts the onus for good gameplay design back where it belongs--the designer and publisher--because end-users cannot be expected to parse poor technical writing or deal with incomplete products. The game is what it is, nothing more and nothing less.

(Yes, most tabletop RPGs are incomplete products. End-users should not be expected to consult outside materials to address ordinary operations during intended gameplay activities when the manual should have handled it, and handled it properly.)

Quoting Jeffro again on what this solves, with added emphasis:

• Alignment finally makes sense because it can be seen to work in its intended context: defining several different sides in a complex ongoing wargame. Restricting player behaviors with these odd-looking rules frees them up to even play different roles that operate with conflicting objectives on different parts of the map.
• The original monster manual finally makes sense! Combined with the random tables in the DMG, it puts detailed Chainmail scale factions into play that have a wide range of leveled characters backing them up. Only the #BrOSR has the objectively correct answer for what to do when the players encounter 300 orcs!
• How dungeon masters created and ran campaigns without piles of adventure modules and supplementary material is finally revealed. This system generates so much adventure and conflict, there is no longer any need for adventure modules. The random tables in the back of the DMG are more than sufficient for sustaining a campaign practically forever.
• The Dungeon Master no longer needs to make up any stories. All he has to do is resolve the many conflicts that arise between factions consistently and fairly according to the rules. Further, a campaign with a culture based on rules as written allows for individual patrons and characters to operate independently while still maintaining campaign cohesion. You can now start playing the legendary domain game starting with your very first session!

Now let's go outside of AD&D. Let's move over to R. Talsorian's Mekton Zeta, and use the Planetary Romance setting of Algol (heavily informed by Mobile Suit Gundam), and how one could go about running a campaign in this model.

Phase One

The Game Master acquires a map of Algol and overlays a hex grid upon it, using a scale suitable for Mecha/Battleship scale travel. Major factions will emerge here, and their leaders specified. Recruit your first round of Patrons here. This will necessitate establishing a Point of Contact (e.g. an email address, Discord server, etc.) for Patrons to contact each other and the Game Master. Play at this point more resembles Diplomacy than anything else, and no table sessions are necessary. This phase lasts until the Patrons' interactions create scenarios playable at the table.

Phase Two

Being that this is Mekton, that inevitably means Giant Robot Combat so most player-characters will be mecha pilots. It is at this point where tablet sessions enter the campaign, and the first player-characters get rolled up. By this point the Game Master will have made public what the procedure for generating characters are. Results of these sessions feed back into Patron interactions, and at this point a public campaign record needs to be available for players at all levels of participation. 1:1 timekeeping takes care of skill improvements, injury recovery, and similiar logistical issues without a problem.

Mekton being a wargame at its heart, including its source material, most playable scenarios will be (para)military operations or political intrigue with a wholly optional side of melodrama. Because scenarios will occur at rates too erratic for one set of player-characters to address, due to 1:1 Timekeeping among other reasons, players shall be welcome to play multiple characters. For example: while the 1st Kargan Marines assault an Elaran research base to secure the new Elaran prototype, a faction fight between Elaran political factions results in a covert war of assassinations and other terror operations--falsely blamed on the Kargans--and the mysterious tech-priest psychics try to warn both states of a returning ancient alien threat. As this all occurs within a week or so, it is impossible for one group of PCs to address all of them; multiple PCs, played by multiple groups of players, and even run by multiple Referees under the Game Master's direction are what it would take to do this.

Phase Three

As the scale and scope of the campaign changes, the Game Master can and should delegate certain table sessions to secondary Referees. Because the game is played Rules As Written, this is not a problem. There is consistency in the gameplay experience because both the Referees and the players adhere to exactly the same rules at all times; you can trust whomever is behind the screen to do exactly what the Game Master would do, and the Referees can trust whomever sits at the table to meet expectations, because all adhere to the same standard.

By this point, the ongoing interactions between Patron actors and player-characters will have reached a critical mass of reaction and the campaign becomes a perpetual content-generating machine. Even if the conflict between Elara and Karga at present ends, not everyone will be satisfied and future conflict will begin to build- and with it, generate a whole new array of playable scenarios as well as playable characters. Players can come and go without worry; the campaign will still be there if, and when, they decide to come back.

The Game Master, by this point, should consider erecting a site for the campaign and permitting outside support via monetization (e.g. Patreon, Subscribestar, monetized YouTube or Twitch channels, Paypal links, crowdfunding) to make this a self-sustaining hobby activity. Regular campaign updates should be on that site, and RSS feed support enabled, along with supporting media (maps, etc.). If the original game publisher isn't aware of the campaign by this point, he will be now, and don't be surprised to find interest take up fast.

Conclusion

You need not do this all at once. You can--and should--proceed with all due caution and approach this as your time and ability allows; this is still a hobby, not a job. This is a thing you grow into organically, not erect from a pre-fabricated kit in a weekend, even if there is a discernable--and thus predictable--pattern of development to this hobby.

The Game Master in particular has to become more of a manager and disinvest himself in the fates of any particular group, man, or feature. He should focus upon ensuring that his campaign maintains its integrity, that its rules are respected, and that everything operates smoothly. This is not idle fancy; just read Rick Stump's blog to see this working in the real world over years of real time. While Jeffro focuses upon AD&D, I assure you that you can apply what he states to damn near every tabletop RPG and get similar if not identical results, because all but a few tabletop RPGs are wargame derivatives and thus operate on the same priciples.