en
English
TTRPG
Any tabletop system
I've been doing TTRPGs since I was a kid, around 2016 or so.
I obviously started out relatively unconnected to roleplay, but over time, I've cemented my ideals, and slowly reached further and further for that ultimate campaign.
Objectively, the greatest strength a player-led campaign has over any CRPG is freedom. A CRPG is inherently stuck to whatever was coded. There's a path, encounters are balanced for the expected player points, loot is guaranteed and pre-arranged, etc.
But a player-led campaign can completely overwrite that, and offer ultimate immersion.
The ideal campaign, in that case, takes advantage of that ultimate strength, and goes all-in on it. The DM doesn't have a pre-arranged story, plot hooks, or really anything planned out. They're just managing the world (ideally their own homebrew for ultimate affinity), whilst the players carve out the story. Encounters aren't pre-balanced to suit the party, what's there is what makes sense to be there-which means the players actually have the most control over the difficulty of an encounter, as things will always leave clues to their nature, things the party can dig out, locate, and prepare from-or know to avoid. The result is that the party forms their own story, without constraint, while the DM focuses on having the world continue its cycle, with elements of the world reacting to the party as it makes sense while the rest of the world continues moving forward.
In that regard, however, obviously the party needs some form of a unifying goal. And I think no goal out there beats the simplicity and scale of forming an empire. Not only does it enable each and every player to pursue their own character interests from a uniquely motivated and capable position (as garnering resources for their own goals can help a foundling empire in many ways, while also pushing them much further), but it also gives a grand, long-term unifying goal to the party.
The only catch is that it requires, as any good thing does, both a good DM and good players. Thankfully though, I've formed a group of players eager to find such a campaign!