As I mentioned in my last post, speeding up gameplay is a second major design focus for my rules set, Sorcery & Steel. In grade school, I ran a very loose 1e AD&D game, using a theater of the mind style, which played quickly (e.g., combats rarely lasted more than 15 minutes). By contrast, my current 1e AD&D GM runs a much tighter, by the book, game. His style is proper Old School, including a battle mat and miniatures, which is great for highlighting the tactical side of encounters but can take much longer (e.g., combats can run more than an hour). And he doesn't even include the most fiddly bits of the rules set, such as Weapon v. Armor Class.
So, with Sorcery & Steel, I want to combine the best elements of both play styles to have an Old School rules set with enough interesting tactical options but also with reasonably fast speed of play.
In addition to eliminating in-game look up tables, my rules set also hand waves most in-game accounting, such as encumbrance. Instead, PCs are allowed to carry whatever they can reasonably explain, with the GM as arbiter of "reasonable". So, if you want to carry five swords, that's fine so long as you can explain where exactly you are carrying said swords and why you shouldn't be penalized during combat.
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