My gaming schedule has been deliberately cut down to nothing so that I can concentrate on getting resumes to my flying monkeys for fast transport. I’ll write more about my first break in gaming in recent memory another time, once I’m out the other side.
Check out Super Hero Necromancer’s amazing wilderness encounter mini-regions. They are really fun.
And a handy-dandy guide to using them.
Fun bits of useable bite-sized setting creation.
Githyanki Diaspora 
Glad to hear you’re enjoying these!
I am!
Rich, its funny, I was about 98% sure that this was your blog. I have it in the section of my google reader where I keep track of friends’ blogs but I just wasn’t entirely sure.
Any thoughts on D&Dnext?
I’m optimistic about D&DNext, but then again, a) I’m an optimist, and b) there’s stuff I like about every edition of D&D.
I can’t really wrap my head around how their proposed approach to modularity (different players using different systems at the same time) is going to work, but they’ve got my attention. I’ve played some pretty Frankensteined up versions of D&D, so I’m not opposed to the idea in principle.
I do hope there’s a fairly streamlined core that I can use from the GM’s side to keep the workload manageable. My dream D&D is closer to the B/X and BECMI/RC versions than anything else, though I appreciate the streamlining of things like the XP charts, attack rolls, and so on that later editions have brought to the table.
What kind of D&D brew are you playing at the moment?
The chassis is 3rd edition. All character creation, combat, magic, skills, and so on are straight 3e.
The play procedures are coming from classic D&D. I keep the Mentzer Red and Blue box rulebooks at hand and use them for that. So I’m using the classic rules for tracking 10 minute turns of time during dungeon exploration, wandering monster checks, morale checks for monosters and hirelings, reaction checks when you first meet up with something (not always hostile), distance of encounters, surprise, likelihood that a trap is set off when you cross its trigger, and so on, as well as the classic D&D stocking procedures (i.e., ratio of empty rooms to occupied rooms in a dungeon, treasure placement, % in lair, and so on).
There is one major house rule to 3e, and that’s in experience. We cut all monster XP values from 3rd edition to 10%, but we give XP for gold.