Style said:
Surprised you haven't gotten more responses. Broadly, the advantages of each:
Episodic - Can avoid minutiae, can move characters around in the world without having to worry about the plausibility of how they get there, can add/subtract party members without figuring out how Joe Bob suddenly appeared in the Unknown Abyss Caverns or how Cindy Loo excused herself from the prince's palace, can rebalance equipment, can avoid the repercussions of actions (plausibly). Can jump around in time.
Serial - Experiences have more depth as you have some basis for how the party got from A to B, ended up with equipment XYZ instead of ABC, or whatever. The world will tend to be more coherent whether it be recurring NPCs, actions having consequences, or that A and B are really, really far apart and there's a war in between them that needs avoiding or whatever.
The cons should be obvious based on the other's pros.
As to how I feel about the two ...
I guess the best example of an episodic I've played in is the living campaign for L5R. It's a tad different in that I don't play with the same PCs for the most part, but I think it suits well enough as an example. What I feel in playing it is the importance of my character over the world. I care about building my abilities, having my amusing stories. But, also, the specific plot of the adventure is more at the fore for me. I'm not paying attention to what the metaplot is, so I take "one game at a time", leading to a certain level of immediacy of immersion. Not to say that's anywhere near as strong as inward concern over my character. So, basically, it's a "Who am I? What am I doing?" situation.
For the most part, I've played in serial campaigns. I find these a lot more engaging because I want to relate to the world. Individual sessions roll into something greater that lends to a more epic or, at least, important feel. Since I don't care as much as some about my characters, it's natural to subsume the character to the party in terms of things like goals. Of course, what happens is that sometimes the characters are underdeveloped and the individual sessions are less engaging since everything is just part of a greater whole. Still, I feel more comfortable with the history that my characters generate in serial campaigns where things happen in a chronological narrative than in episodic situations where, for instance, I hand wave how a character moved from the CIA to the NSA or is now suddenly a merc. Anyway, to relate to the world, you want to have some consistency to that world and serial campaigning lends itself better to that. The contrasting situ question would be more like "What's going on around us?"
