Planning the "Seasons" of your Campaign

I supported the Kickstarter for the new sourcebook detailing the history of Aaron Allston's Strike Force campaign.  This is an update and expansion upon the 96-page classic tome Aaron Allston's Strike Force which came out in the early 1990's, and like the first book essentially outlines not only the major plots and characters of the eponymous Champions RPG campaign (which continued past the early 90's for another decade).  The campaign became a world in which multiple campaigns were spun off and included an estimated 48 players.  The core Strike Force campaign had over 260 sessions to its name.
And that sounds epic, literally and figuratively.  And in that regard, while it seems highly unlikely that I could ever come close to that, there's no harm in trying to get even a fraction of that.  My longest campaign probably had about a tenth of that number of sessions.  Why not try again?
It's worth noting that Allston apparently played many years twice a week, Tuesdays and Saturdays, with the Tuesday game being often a short-term, varied genre (often using the HERO system) while the Saturday game was usually Strike Force or one of the ancillary teams that made up the Strike Force Universe.  For example there was a splinter group set in DC, New York, the Bahamas, and eventually in space.  As an example of a Tuesday game there was also a "soap opera" style superhero campaign called Twilight Falls than apparently ran for 120 sessions, but no details about it are in the books.
In order to help with the longevity of the game, Allston would organize his Strike Force campaign into "seasons."  The season for the Tuesday game would be six months long (likely the whole span of the campaign), while the Strike Force season would be three months, or about twelve gaming sessions.   At the beginning of each season, Allston would fill out his own outline of what he wanted to have happen in the season, often looking at the disadvantages of the PC's for likely Hunters, DNPC's, etc. (This was called the "What Do I Want to Do" sheet.)  He would then send out a form to each players asking them the following:

• Which PC they planned on using this season, since most have multiple PC's
• Character Homes and Communities
• Long Term Goals for the PC
• Short Term Goals for the PC
• Relationships with other characters (professional, romantic, etc.)
• Personal training and grown (including XP spent)
• Plots you'd like to see your PC experience

I like this for so many reasons, the biggest two being the incorporation of player input and the notion of planning things out 12 sessions or so at a pop.  It follows a TV-style format where you have a season of an ongoing series with its own plot, villains, etc.

It's worth noting Allston didn't launch his campaign with this format.  In fact the campaign began as a playtest for Champions II.  Allston in the original works mentions coyly that the first session had all the narrative grace of having fantasy RPG characters all meet in a tavern.  So, he says semi-hypothetically, if I were to run a Champions or supers RPG campaign myself, how would I handle this?  Most of the players wouldn't have a solid handle of their characters, or the world around them.  They would need some sort of introduction, a settling-in period.  My thought would be to do the first season as a mini-series of sorts, like six gaming sessions rather than 12.  That would be a enough time to introduce a major villain for the six-session run, maybe a minor villain or villain group to reappear in a later season, work in some major NPC's, and let the players get a handle on both the rules and their characters.  Then the first regular series could begin using the Strike Force format.

Just musing, thinking, and planning...