Watching a nifty video for the Roll20.net computer-moderated RPG system, I notice that the narrator uses “campaign” to refer to a single combat set-up: maps, counter placement, etc. For me, that’s not a campaign; it’s a scenario, or perhaps an adventure. As I learned it, a campaign must be a linked series of adventures or gaming sessions. But I’ve increasingly heard people use “campaign” to refer to a one-time instance of play.
This seems like a recent thing; I don’t remember people using ‘campaign’ that way before about a decade ago, at the earliest. What about you? Have you heard the term shifting?
A symptom of the ever-greater distance between the RPG hobby and and its roots in wargaming.
IMHO, you cannot have a campaign without linkage. in wargaming, that means losses you take this battle affect the next. In RPG, that means that perfect skill for adventure #1 (lockpicking when robbing an Old West bank) is useless in adventure #2 (lost in the wilderness).