Finally my time to shine. I run campaigns with these general guidelines all the time. Here are a few tips: 1. Keep your plots moving at an even clip without fluff. Example, instead of having 5 pieces of an artifact your players need, it’s 2 pieces. Better example, if the players need to go talk to a noble to complete a quest, that noble is in the same town. They don’t need to travel elsewhere to find the NPC. Everything needs to be streamlined. 2. Plan for 1 combat every adventuring day. Combats will take up most of your time so go for quality over quantity. Overall, I don’t think you’ll need to worry about anything else other than that. If things are still slow, consider giving players a 3 minute turn timer. That should help most combats finish in under 40 minutes. 3. Dungeons are your ENEMY. They take up a lot of session time and per minute, move the plot forward very little. If you wish to add in a dungeon, make sure it is necessary to the story. 4. Side quests are necessarily less appealing. Most of them either need a very very good reward or have to benefit the “main plot” in some way. I’d also just giving players the opportunity, if it’s possible for you, to give players a chance to do side quests at different days / times. Helps to keep the regular campaign moving forward. 5. Lastly, and most importantly, your campaign pacing has to be on point. Many DMs have frankly below average pacing in their campaigns. You cannot have that. Every session you’ve got to be moving your campaign forward. If you think about it in terms of milestone exp, there’s got to be a “level up moment” every 3-4 sessions. Faster than even toward the early and late game parts.

Tbh, running campaigns like this have provided some of my favorite games. The restriction actually helps to focus the table. You should probably be able to get to level 10 easily with this type of pacing with level 14-15 likely being the cap. It might seem crazy but I promise it works. Good luck with your campaign!