I've seen a few classes of strategy that all have positive and negative aspects.
- Forgotten Realms style: Have your setting advance regularly in time, with major events and changes communicated in adventures and setting books.
- Pathfinder style: Have a single setting book that establishes canon, but the setting doesn't change much beyond that. Adventure paths and the like don't have any official consequences, unless the setting as a whole gets redone.
- OSR style: There's no common setting, much less a metaplot. Products might reference each other, but it's assumed that different groups will use different products and make different adaptations in different ways.
- Others?
"Pathfinder style" ensures that most groups should be able to use most published material. The issue is that players might get annoyed that, even though multiple campaigns took place in the same setting, they can never see consequences down the line. It's pretty fun to start an orphanage in one campaign and then revisit it years later in a different one.
"OSR style" allows for the greatest possible continuity between games, but it also puts the most onus on Mr. Cavern in terms of either coming up with a lot of original content or spending a lot of time adapting published material.