What Media Format Is Your Preferred Campaign Style?

I have been running more published stuff to start, but add homemade tangents depending on the players and where they want to go. I also like to have a few levels or adventures tied to something and then move onto another arc, but leave room for a big plot that ties things together.

I have campaigns going on right now. One uses this method and the other are just one-shots used for filler around the other campaign. I use it to add something to the first campaign or to give out information. I'm not sure if it will continue after the larger campaign ends.

I use Babylon 5 as my role model. I love the are multiple layers of story lines. There is the big-picture metaplot, long term factions each with their own internal & external conflict arcs, the various entities and factions that feel they are immune to current events or are just ignorant, and then the various personal relationship arcs (friend, foe or frenemy) that help make it real.

Plus B5 got rewritten mid-story repeatedly to deal with external events like a key actor's progressing mental illness, various contract negotiations, network issues. being almost-canceled repeated, etc. Which makes a good example for not being overly attached to any specific implementation of a plot.

GMs don't get to write the whole story but a TV script falls apart if key actors don't show up 4 seasons in and DMs don't have to live within a budget for special effects.

Babylon 5 is probably the model I reference back to as well in most campaigns. A degree of long term overarching ‘plot’ for want of a better word. Big things happening in the background for the players to interact with and either adapt to or rail against as they wish. Interleaved with smaller happenings; character driven / related events or just seemingly random stuff they happen across with no specific relation to either player backstories or the ‘plot’. Recently I have been running quite a few Savage Worlds ‘plot point campaigns’ and these are pretty much built along that model so a good fit for me.

I do like other kinds of campaign structures too. I am looking forward to running some sandbox style games in the future. I think something like Game of Thrones would probably be a good touchstone for a game like that, with lots of different things happening in an interweaved way. Not quite the same multiple viewpoint approach but similar in that it would involve the PCs looking in different directions, to mangle the metaphor.