A few observations -- courtesy of the American Council for the Obvious
.
AD&D delivers answers
fast.
In the course of three short sessions, the party met a patron, foiled a murder, explored the site of another murder, fought rats, undead, and a corrupt city watch squad led by a Minotaur, overcame the Minotaur using trickery, framed them to avoid trouble with the law, rescued two imprisoned miniature dryads, agreed to return them to their "egg", discovered the location of a dungeon (site of egg), traveled there, and got knocked to the edge of a TPK by striges.
Oh, and they've been hired to take out a thieves guild.
They also found trainers, joined guilds, and leveled once (handled over the campaign message board). In doing so the fighter's getting pulled into a turf dispute between rival fighter's guilds on the docks and the thief's strengthening his ties to goblin organized crime.
Leveling has left them broke, except for a Ring of Protection +1, something called an Aster Diamond, which is tremendously valuable --to the right buyer, which in this case means a powerful monster like a demon or other planar horror-- and a war dog (who probably won't survive the stirges).
Part of this pace comes from the rules. They're quick, they don't sweat the details, and you can ignore anything that slows things down (like a proper implementation of the initiative and morale rules).
The funny things is, the combats have been fairly tactically-rich, full of environmental interaction -- it's just not the formalized kind found in 4e. Lots of slamming/jamming doors, seeking refuge, Webbing trees, jumping into lakes. I'm trying to avoid designing set-pieces, fights occur where they happen, and the things present on-scene are supposed to be "logical" (for certain definitions of...). Hopefully I can keep this up.
Part of the pace is simply me trying to run the campaign smarter. Keep the action moving. keep asking "what to you do now?", keep clear goals dangling in front of the group (the threat of poverty is a nice motivator).
Savage Worlds was a pretty fast system, too. We look forward to getting back into it, if the GM can ever escape from Canada. But so far it can't hold a candle, speed-wise, to a system we've collectively had years of experience with.