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Posting this in a couple places because I'm curious.

Basically, the question is what the subject line says: What makes a good 3-5 game narrative campaign for you? The kind you might play over a long weekend in the garage, or in a marathon club event. Lots of mission variety, or a series of 1500-2000 point games? Asymmetrical objectives? Do you prefer there to be a known plot arc and then a winner at the end, or for the missions and plot to respond to each game's result? Somewhat generic, or very specifically "Joe's Eldar vs. Amy's Orks"?

Hold on I'll show you what I've begun to play with a friend of mine:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/659504.page

Narrative Campaign with a sliding victory scale and not enough points to carry you through the campaign (unless you have a greater than 40% survival rate for your models).

Here's my two cents,

1. Frame the context of the individual scenarios within the larger campaign
2. Adjust the objectives, terrain, and special rules of each scenario to reflect progression within the greater campaign
3. Allow individual games to impact the winners of scenario
4. Allow development of the HQs and army to reflect their growth during the campaign

I thought this looked pretty cool.

http://warhammerworld.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/Inquisition-Wars.pdf
http://warhammerworld.games-workshop.com/2015/08/04/the-inquisition-wars-campaign-weekend/

Convincing and interesting armies with a compelling goal. Pretty terrain and a coherent storyyline help too.

Having an actually storyteller, like those found in Role-Playing Games.

Instead of just being a bunch of battles between players, themed so they seem to be playing out on some world or containing 'carry over' effects to make them appear to be occurring one after the other, actually have a Storyteller that runs and changes the game while it is being played. Players can still be battling each other still, and/or making the decision to team up against the storyteller, but someone controlling the over all direction of the game makes a big difference. From random events that just happen to spice up the battle, to actual 'non-player armies' and even 'civilians,' there is much to be had by having someone overseeing more then just setting up the tables and tallying scores.

'Non-Player Armies' can do things no player would dream of doing, such as ignoring the actions of the players unless it occurs within Line of Sight of a Unit or directly affects said Unit. This allows smaller armies a chance to do some amazing things against a larger foe, because they do not have to fear simply being crushed by the weight of the enemies numbers... unless they mess up bad. From sneaking into a command post and killing important Head Quarter Units, capturing objectives behind the lines to cause some panic in the defending troops or even blowing up buildings vital to the enemies long-term goals, breaking that omnipresent nature of the enemy allows 'covert tactics' to flourish.

It even allows the story to be changed mid-game, such as modifying what an objective does depending on how the players interact with it or causing the terrain to shift because a volcanic world may not be the best place to do battle but that STC is not going to retrieve itself. They can allow reinforcements to simply arrive if one player is getting the short end due to dice rolls, assign new war-gear and Special Rules to indicate increased skill or a weapon cache being captured, and cause other effects to occur when the timing is right. One of my favourites within such a system is to have a clearly heavily defended position and allow capturing of secondary objectives to cause a state of snafu within the ranks... nothing like taking a battery of Imperial Guard artillery and turning it on their own men to have them break ranks and run!

After all, a storyteller isn't there to 'win' but to actually make an enjoyable experience by giving you a story that unfolds as you play it.

Have connection between each game and make sure it has a strong theme.

One guy at our club writes some pretty interesting campaigns that are like the opposite of escalation, we start at 2000 points and only play with what survived the previous game(s). We usually make objectives simple so as not to have the forces decimated in the first game, really fun way to play.