Lanefan
Victoria Rules
There's the difference, perhaps: many games are played with an underlying - or outright declared - expectation that they will continue to a longer campaign; and that while the game always has a "point" it'll be set up such that when or before one "point" has been reached another one, further away, will present itself.Now, is there a win condition for the game? Sure is, complete the module. We're playing this game for the module, with little expectation to continue to a longer campaign. The idea of the never ending game without a point is one I increasingly find odd.
So, the campaign might start out with an underlying backstory where the ultimate goal of the PCs (a.k.a the current point of the game) - slowly discovered as play goes along - is to prevent the kingdom from being overthrown.
This is fine; and fifteen adventures in well look at that, you've prevented the overthrow and cast down the traitors. But in that time another goal has appeared: during your dealings with the traitors you stumbled on to a portal through which demons are set to invade, and now your goal is to sort that out. Great; and six adventures later the demonic invasion has been thwarted, only now you've learned that there's at least a dozen major demonic agents scattered around the [region/continent/world, whichever suits] causing unrest and trouble, and so off you go on another string of adventures to deal with them.....and so it goes.
All this assumes, of course, that the players/PCs remain engaged with these goals; for all anyone can predict they might decide at some point to chuck it in and do something quite different, leaving their original goals for others to sort out.