We’ve been stuck in the D&D Ghetto too much lately, so Chuck put together a new Savage Worlds game! We’re all nonhuman freaks in a dark fantasy setting of his conception. All the details are on the session summary page!
I enjoyed the system. The card-based initiative and the bennies were nice. Combat definitely went faster than in D&D – we started late, took some time finishing up our characters, etc. but still went through adventure initiation and four combats in one session. As session scribe, I was having trouble keeping up with the action (not a problem in our D&D combats).
The main dice mechanic is still a little fiddly; I’m sure it’s because we’re not used to it yet but it’s still reasonably crunchy with the different difficulty numbers and “raises” if you beat your to hit by 4 and all that. The bit that slows it down the most is that you don’t know the difficulty to hit, so there’s a lot of back and forth about “did I hit, did I get a raise?” As I was an archer (ranged weapons hit on a flat 4) it was easier.
I liked Chuck’s setting, a bunch of weird new PC races is always nice,and I’ve been wanting a good gritty Thieves’ World kind of character lately. Something about settings with character flaws always encourages us to take loads of them, and then to become some horrendous scallywags. This was no exception.
Anyway, check out the full session summary! We all had a good time.
Geek Related 
I think, though I’m not sure, that most SW GMs announce both what the Parry you have to beat to hit and the Toughness you have to beat to Wound is. It really speeds things up, particularly if you have players handling all the attacks from a group of extras in one go. And it’s not like the players can’t do the math to figure out what the scores must have been once they see that they’ve gotten a hit and a raise.
I tried to announce the target’s Parry once a PC hit the poor schmucks and their Toughness once someone hurt one of them. But I think it drowned out by various battle cries and “Woot! Woot!”
Also, I’ve posted a distilled version of the Races and Arcane Backgrounds over on my blog.
http://www.grogtard.com/?p=326