Komhuus

I have played 2 APs with Vermillion over the past year going from level 1 to 11 and level 11 to soon to be level 20 and will be starting a third AP with new characters when the group completes the current adventure. I can definitey recommend Vermillion as a GM for a ton of reasons: he has a breadth of knowledge of Pathfinder 2e rules and other details, quick grasp of how things work when faced with something new and weird a character pulls out of their toolkit, and a patient approach to teaching folks new to the game (PF2e) and the system (Foundry). He also makes great judgment calls for everyone's benefit--for example, when an AP decides the entire party should individually roll skill checks every in-game day for a several-month trek and we quickly discover how boring and tedious it will become, and possibly taking a dozen sessions to get through, he decided to cut it way back and do the rolls by week instead. That was a simple change to make something tedious into something that we players got to *experience* in the spirit of the AP but without the slog it would have otherwise been (it still took a few sessions, because there were encounters and such, but it felt a lot less sloggy). That's one particular example of how great Vermillion is at keeping pacing; in general, he keeps sessions moving while allowing us to experience roleplay and combat and even *gasp* actual downtime activities should we want to! Vermillion is great to talk to about what you want to do with your character, and he'll offer good options to make that happen (e.g., suggesting Witches+ for my witch prior to remaster witch coming out, which added a bit more versatility to my character). Also, Vermillion has an understanding of getting Foundry to do what we want/need it to do by adding macros and custom effects--of the GMs I've played with who know how to use the system well, Vermillion has been the most proficient in creating macros and custom effects that the modules haven't implemented (e.g., a bunch of kineticist things don't have effects that really should, and Vermillion has added them in for our kineticist). These extra touches help make things go more smoothly, because there are fewer things we need to rely on memory for turn by turn.

I have been playing with Simply for over a year at this point, in multiple campaigns (Kingmaker, Blood Lords, Stolen Fates, and just started Wardens of Wildwood), some of which are still ongoing. The worldbuilding Simply does is reactive to the players' interest and the interactions we enjoy, above and beyond what is presented in the adventure paths, and it makes it such an awesome experience that builds on itself session after session. Simply incorporates the players' characters into the world he's running through adding in engaging elements from characters' backstories (all the way from off-hand mentions of things to entire side adventures) or advancing minor interactions into larger plot lines, which really flesh out the world for us and makes the games he runs both really enjoyable and really replayable, because each run-through will have differences tailored to the group that's playing. Random NPCs--whether part of the adventure or something Simply came up with on the spot--can often become critical members of the story as well. A few examples: In Kingmaker, we recruited a kobold tribe as founding members of the kingdom we formed; later, they were being harassed/eaten by griffons, so our party went out and tracked the griffons to their nest, defeating most of them--but leaving some alive to be tamed and trained as mounts; we hired a griffon warden/trainer (a character from my character's backstory); and now, we have griffon-mounted aerial kobold alchemical bombers raining fiery death upon our enemies, with *minimal* collateral damage. Also in Kingmaker, an interaction with a bandit group where we attempted diplomacy rather than combat helped us take out the Stag Lorg without a fight (they added better poison to the wine and helped us refine our disguise/infiltration plan); later, that bandit group's leader and her bandits joined our kingdom as enforcers/guards; then, the bandit group leader became our army's General; and two of the party members introduced her to a random NPC who then became her fiance, and my character has offered to conduct the Heartbond ritual for them at their wedding after the current war we're in is over. In Blood Lords... Well, I probably shouldn't post specifics in public, but I will state that Simply added in a lot of whimsically gruesome elements to the story that were quite enjoyable for my character, the sadistic serial killer fear-focused bard ghost.