What's at the Center?

Depends on the Angle
"Characters. They are the foundation of Burning Wheel. Nothing matters so much as the character, and nothing happens without a character being involved - either directly or indirectly." so Luke Crane writes in the opening to his excellent The Burning Wheel FRPG. Character-centric is the way I would describe the approach described here. The character drives the action, is central to the story that develops during play and therefore must be at the center of the game. It's all about the character. So what happens when the character dies?
Role-playing games can be seen as an extension of literature and story-telling. I believe the hobby has been around long enough to talk about traditions. Traditionally, many campaigns have centered on the setting or world, with various characters who have come and gone, some leaving their mark, and a few who may have changed the world in permanent ways. The campaign is seldom tied to any one character or even to the adventures of a single fellowship of characters. Characters and even players may come and go while the world itself remains the same, changing, but recognizably the same.
From one angle, I could say the game is always about the PCs. They are the actors on the world stage. Whatever happens is the result of players involving their characters in situations, making choices, rolling dice and all the other activities of a role-playing game. Theirs is the story that emerges from play. But a really good world deserves to be the setting of many stories, told through the actions of many PCs. No matter how complex and time consuming the chargen system is, creating the world is way more involved and time consuming for the referee. The best settings get richer as they are played, growing with input from the players. As time goes on, the story becomes bigger than individual PCs and a (hi)story of the world starts developing and the PCs seem to fit into this world. It is at this point that the game seems most real and play becomes immersive. That is the view from a second angle - the world-centric view.
The importance of tracking time and keeping notes in a campaign cannot, as Mr Gygax said, be overstated. The passing of time and the recording of events is what allows the world itself to come alive. Otherwise it is merely a stage, props in the backdrop that seem to change at a whim of the referee rather than in a way that seems natural to the events in game play. Effort spent by the referee in recording changes in the world is just as important as recording changes in a player's character.