I do the DM equivalent of this.
When I'm not running a game, or even sometimes between sessions, I make plans and get ideas for other games and plots. I have more ideas for games to run than I could use in a year of daily playing.
Right now I'm thinking of ideas and planning details for: a fallout inspired Pathfinder setting (complete with mutant races and advanced tech), a decadent and corrupt elven empire where elves are the default race (and also the default hybrid breeding choice), an east meets west Vikings vs. Samurai setting, an X-men themed game using modified Aberrant rules, and a more traditional Pathfinder game where the war between heaven and hell has been shifted to a proxy war in the form of competing adventurer guilds.
I'll never get the chance to use most of my ideas, but I enjoy developing them. :)
I would actually like to do more PC (or in my case, NPC) building, but like I said earlier, I've just gotten lazy over the years. The PF/3.x method takes so long sometimes and I can't afford something like HeroLab. I have used PCGen a bit, though. It seems ok.
I would have thought that if you could get away with using the lobby of the Chase building, Whole Foods would be no problem (unless one of head honchos of Chase is a PF/D&D fan?).
I tend to make a character of any concept I think of. Whenever an inspiration hits, I have to make a new sheet and backstory.
Characters, not so much. But NPCs, yes. Lots of them. I GM most of the time so I'm constantly looking at monsters and thinking "What if I added 2 levels of Warrior or Adept?" Sometimes I add full PC classes too. Wierdly I don't usually use templates. I don't know why.
I make tons of settlements too. A fun way to pass the time for me is to grab my GMG, some dice, and randomly roll up a settlement. 1d8 for size, 1d3 on each of the Lawful - Chaotic and Good - Evil alignment spectrum, and 1d5 for Government. Then once I've got those basics I randomly dice up Qualities using a D12.
I grab some other random charts and dice up the surrounding area. Based on the area and size/Qualities of the place I try and figure out what they'd be known for: a resilient castle defense, a fantastic shrine, racially intolerant woodcutters, etc. Once I know the settlement I then grab some encounter charts.
Based on the highest level of spellcasting I decide what the most powerful single villain would be to oppose the place. Usually that villain is a CR or 2 below the highest spellcaster. Then I roll up a random encounter to that level for either a dungeon or the land in the area. If the monster is a full on mindless monster I try and figure what intelligent creature(s) would take advantage of its presence. Otherwise I just take the intelligent monster I rolled up and add a couple levels of some NPC or PC class.
Finally, after all of this, I have a full adventure waiting to get played. I randomly roll up a Hamlet, Magical, LN with Racial Intolerance. The only stats that go up are Spellcasting, Law, Lore; Corruption and Society go way down. I also know there's a decent level spellcaster here.
I go with a 5th level wizard who's driving the racial intolerance. I roll up the region: forest. But then I roll up the villain, an orc. I decide to hedge it, go half orc and give her levels of witch. The wizard in his youth got captured and tortured in the nearby mountains. He was also coerced into lewd and lascivious acts. The villain is his granddaughter.
Now I just need to add details. How would the witch oppose the town? How would the wizard defend everyone? Why would the PCs need to go there? Fill in those blanks and throw together a couple maps and bam, I've got an adventure.
This is why I like this guy's stuff. ^