At least from what I know, the speed of DF is based on your FPS and having a fast computer is the way to make time go faster. Although starting out is pretty similar between fast and slow computers, the speed is drastically different with a large fortress. This game is pretty inactive when it comes to speedrunning but it's still an important thing to think about. Is there any way to level the playing field?

its going to be faster to use pocket worlds anyway, which cranks the processing power to human interaction being the limiting factor, ultimately.

unless youre running this on a winxp laptop from 2005 you should be fine, in other words. speedruns of other games have the necessary requirement of being able to run the game as well.