There is a noticable effect in running a campaign properly, as the #BROSR describes. That effect is the shift in mentality in the players from being passive to being active, and the manifestation of that effect is in the decrease of the workload upon the Game Master.
When players are free to decide upon and pursue their own agendas, including--especially--the freedom to work at cross-purposes with other players' characters or their own, those moves do the work of creating campaign material for the Game Master.
A player's Fighter wishes to raise an army? That is an undertaking that requires a significant expenditure of wealth and time to accomplish, and such an effort cannot avoid being noticed by other characters, who can--and will--take that into account when deciding their own moves in pursue of their own objectives. Maybe a Cleric offers to aid the Fighter in return for concessions to his religion. Maybe a Thief inserts spies into his army and attempts to steal treasures found out from under the Fighter. Maybe a Magic-User divines that Fighter's intention and attempts to subvert it to serve his objectives instead.
Yet if you go to YouTube and seek out the DND channels talking about things that Normie-level players do, you find none of this and even after filtering out the drama by people who couldn't be trusted with a plastic butterknife, you still have this boring reactive "might as well be playing (insert CRPG title here)" style of play that sucks the wind (and fun) out of tabletop RPGs.
Note above that I said that players' characters can work at cross-purposes. Yes, this means that Bob's Paladin and Assassin can--and should--be striving against each other, and the other players ought to be entertained by this- especially the Game Master. Yes, this means that other players can, and should, be aiding or hindering one or both with one or more of their own characters as befits circumstances and ambitions of those characters.
That Fighter's army-raising threatening Bob's Assassin? Bob's Paladin should be, at the least, trying to point said army at the Assassin. That Assassin should be trying to get a shot at the Fighter, the Paladin, or getting someone else to do so, etc. to keep that army from breaking down his door. (That Assassination table is mean.)
Game Masters in such an environment suffer from an embarassment of riches as they find not only that they need not bother with much content creation of their own, but rather may need to delegate Referee duties to others from time to time. This is a sign of campaign success.
The actions of Patron-level characters on the Domain level inevitably, and unavoidably, creates the liminal spaces wherein standard table adventuring can and does go down; that Fighter's mustering of an army means that combat-capable men will be in short supply for a while and so the odds of bandits or monster incursions arising grows- and that means the opportunity to lead or thwart such grows also.
The prospect of war means that logistics have to be addressed, so someone playing a Merchant character will sense opportunities for profit long before battles take place; food needs to be stockpiled, arms crafted and gathered, transportation--wagons, carts, horses,etc.--arranged, raw materials sourced and delivered, specialists (such as healers) need to be recruited and transfered to the muster point, etc.
Just one player, deciding on a course of action for one character, can easily prompt all of this campaign play.
I've been speaking in AD&D 1st Edition terms, but this applies to any real RPG; it's just that AD&D1e has a lot of support for proper campaigning built into its ruleset, and too many RPGs don't even realize that this is a thing at all due to Cargo Cultism and the incompetence that breeds.
Proper timekeeping makes this all managable as a hobby done in one's freetime, and not making it a second job for one man while the rest show up expecting to be entertained by a dancing monkey.
Proper wargame-rooted gameplay keeps the Theater Kid faggotry, and all the stupidity it brings, away and focuses those present on getting shit done in the time allotted.
Too much suck happens because this is not done. This suck has to stop, and this year is as good as any to make it happen. Time to show one at all how to #winatrpgs.
Conquering a hex and building a castle, and then going on to rule, is the best part of the game for me.
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