Games as a whole have DEFINITELY slowed down compared to what they typically were on LJ. There's still a few larger, fast ones out there but I think most of them hover around a similar speed as Little Hades right now.

Plurk DEFINITELY helps a lot. You can manage without it but you'd just have to be very diligent about PM'ing people for plotting purposes and hitting them up on CR memes and whatnot. Plurk is where a lot of random brainstorming happens and its where we all kinda hang out and get to know each other beyond RP.