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Last year, I got excited about the idea of tracking realworld time over downtime. Shortly after I implemented it in my campaign, and it served the entire table, very well.
Real-time RPGs look strange if you look at them from the wrong end. Let me turn it around for you:
1. The players are just anyone who turns up on the day. This could be 3 or 6 players - we don't know who's free.
2. As a result, we'll have to wrap each adventure up on the night.
3. Time can become inconsistent at this point - different PCs arriving in different areas at different times threatens to make some deeply inconsistent and warped narratives.
4. We can fix this by insisting on in-game time passing at a set standard.
Using 'real-world time' comes as a result of an open table. And the open table has some great benefits.
I didn't have any scheduling problems, and apparently I'm the only GM in the world to not suffer from this problem.
1. If players A, B, and C arrive for the first game, all good.
2. For the second, B comes, and C brings along D and E, and we have another round.
3. Players A, B, and E can make it.
As long as 3 or more players can make the day, the game goes on.
Here is what football sounds like, if it sounded like what RPG players sound like:
Fancy a game of football on Saturdays? I mean all Saturdays. Every one, for the next few months. We need you to join to a pivotal part of this grand game. You can't miss one game, or we'll have to call the whole thing off for that week. Can you make it?
Madness.
People say things like this, and then wonder why they can't organize a game.
No, wait. Actually they don't phrase it like that, but if someone can't arrive for game night, and you cancel the entire game, because 'Shlogenstok, the half-elf alchomancer just has to be there, because we stopped half-way through the Endless Ice-Caves', then you have basically done this.
I set my own campaign to run at 3 times normal speed, so 1 week or real-world time equals 3 weeks of in-game time. After ~9 months of gameplay, one player had made almost every session, and their character had gained a hell of a lot of XP. They began as a little gnome, and ended, well still a little gnome actually, but they were deadly.
At the start, stabbing at a giant spider didn't work, due to their poor aim, and slow movements. By the end of the campaign, the little gnome sprinted towards five ogres, avoided a club smashing into the ground, jumped onto the club, ran up the weapon, stabbed the ogre in the eye, then jumped off his head to stab the next one three times, leaving him in bleeding to death on the ground.
From the perspective of the gnome, this whole change took two and a half years. That seems a little on the short side, but it's a lot better than so many campaigns where characters progress from zero-to-hero in a couple months of game-time.
The narrative of progression makes sense.
The game had maybe 15 players all in all. I'm an immigrant, and a lot of travellers came and went, and some brought friends. Nobody could guarantee they'd be at the table, even for a second session. But that never mattered - they could rock up, roll up a random character, and start playing immediately.
I once had a game end after the three hour mark, and the plot clearly had unresolved threads. I did what I could. It was a little awkward.
But one problem in 9 months seems like small potatoes.
I run a game without healing magic, so the PCs need to return to civilization sooner rather than later. But if you present a 3-layer mega-dungeon to PCs who can cast Light, and Cure Any Wound all day, then this system probably won't work for you.
The standard fantasy trope of the journey will not work out well. The troop cannot travel to Mordor while swapping PCs in and out.