Gone Digital: Act IV

Act IV. The culmination of Vasuro's journey the Diablo 3 (well, his first) nears an end. I reached Act IV last night before heading to bed. Aside from the really annoying loss of some achievements due to a software bug (thanks Blizzard), D3 has been incredibly fun. I'm not what I'm going to do when I finish normal mode. Right now four things are on the table: forge ahead with Nightmare mode on Vasuro, start over with another class, jump back into miniature painting (at least my Pathfinder mini), or work on some adventure ideas I had. I think painting may win out since I can use mini now and shouldn't take too long.
Of course, I may at least write down my adventure ideas so they disappear in my head. And they're not really adventures so much as locations/encounters. A quick aside, I had talked about running a new Pathfinder campaign a few months ago for some friends. It was going to be a homemade campaign rather then an AP. The players start out as Pathfinder Society probationary members with the first few sessions covering their training as well as their "test" mission. Each probationary member is given a mission that acts as their final exam with success meaning they become a full Society member and failure meaning they can try again a year later. After 2 failures, they are out.
Back to the location's discussion. Each location would have a set theme and goal (ex: find/explore ruins). Then I would determine the minimum difficulty for the encounter based off of character level and group size (ex: 4 1st-2nd level PCs). I would not worry about party composition (i.e. does the group have a cleric or fighter?) Next I decide on the number and scale of each iteration of the location (ex: 3 scales of 1st, 5th, 7th level PCs). After that, I write down an outline of the location's parts, draw a rough map and start filling in the blanks. Each iteration of the location would use the same overall map but have it's own notes. This way I would be able to reuse the location for different sessions or scale the location to better suit the party without needing to "wing it" as much.
While part of the idea of the campaign is to have it be an open world rather then always scaled to the PCs, I don't want the PCs to go wherever they want without thinking about the consequences.