In the main book it gives out the way to make a breakthru. It details how to roll everything and how a magus wastes his time in pursuit of meaby some glory within the Order.

I find that for a role playing game they could have added a bit more space for role play in those rules... same goes for experimentation.

I would suggest the following:

- Make players do int+organisation lore checks because their research rang a bell about hints that other magus research wen't in the same way in the past or present
- Have a roll that defenitively indicates a link with a phenomenon which if investigated would help in the research.
- Allow some form of rule for original research with help of other magus. I was thing something like for each Int+MT total of the help that equal's the difficulty of the research, allow a +/- 1 to rolls. Ex: Minor discovery : difficulty 18, Boni has a lab total of 25 hence takes 3 season for a roll. Gus & tom have a sum of 38 together hence would add a marger of +/- of 2 to all rolls. boni rolls a 1 on his first roll followed by a 7 which is 14. Whithout help he would have lost his 3 seasons but now he finds a hint. he then rolls another die and gets a 8+2+1=11 which is not enough to make the break thru but still a good try. but this does not help role play ... hmmm...
-other .. I'm sure we can find more things to render lab research more interesting.

Consider the following:
The roll of tribunals is more than just a meeting to decide issues, it is a forum for expounding on research, making contacts and deals, etc.

It would be in the interests of a Bonisagus to host a forum session during the tribunal to express his/her theories, and how they are being developed, and attend the forums of other magi to see if anything they are working on will help... A good storyguide should be able to run with this, and add modifiers, etc. to the breakthrough, making it easier or harder, depending on the insights or setbacks gained through these meetings...

Ed

Since guaranteed insights are extremely valuable to characters, the SG should adamantly resist any attempts to introduce general dice-rolling rules about getting them. She should rather consider the attempted discovery and use that as the basis to decide whether and how guaranteed insight can be found about it, than allow herself to be bulldozed into giving it out because a die fell this or that way.

Note that breakthrough recoveries are quite impossible to make by just rolling the dice. Just do the math: to have a chance to weather the resulting lab explosions and twilight risk a Magus would need a Magical Theory of about 50 plus an Enigmatic Wisdom of some 7 - or twilight will get him long before he gets close to making the breakthrough.
Seeing that after 150 years in lab and lib, with tractatus circle in Magic Theory, cunning-folk charms for Scribe/Concentration and all such, even Post Coch's Noctivagus had only a Magic Theory of 25 (325 experience points, while his twilight points were already 16), you can conclude that a Magic Theory of 50 (1275 experience points) is just beyond the reach of the Order.

Kind regards,

Berengar

What I'm looking for is something that is less of a roll your thing and see if it is bad(most probable) or good(lucky you)

I'd think of something like you select a few factors (special ingredients(a bit like ingredients for longivity potions), increced exposition(would lower your lab total) and other factors like that that would actually help the game and help introducing new events to render experimentation more interesting.

I see experimentation as a tunnel where you push the spell thru and pommel it with different ingredients and tests. It would be nice if we had a bit more control on where we wanted to go then just roll the die and see what you got.

*****

I agree that the system presented in the Grimoire is unusable. It is obvious that Bonisagus could never have made the discoveries he did in fact make while following these rules. Of course, if Sanctuary of Ice is correct, he did not have to worry about Twilight because none of the Founders except Criamon were afflicted with it until after Bonisagus incorporated Criamon's insights into Hermetic Theory and thereby contaminated the rest of them with it. And then people got angry with the Druids instead of the Criamon!

One way to allow for successful original research is to rule that a positive Twilight experience while testing a theory can yield a guaranteed insight. This is thematically sound as well, given that sacrificeing for occult knowledge is such a common mythical theme (Odin's eye, Merlin's sanity, etc.)

If that's too much trouble then do it the easy way, take the Destiny Virtue, then you can stumble into a breakthrough in your spare time while doing something else as a 'day job', such as working at the Swiss patent office <g>

Gene

Breakthrough discoveries are campaign world altering events which must remain in the hands of the SG. The WG rules leave them there, and add flavor mechanics to researching, with lots of blown up labs and twilight experience.
The main tool of the SG to adjudicate discoveries in her campaign is handing out guaranteed insights. She should refuse any kind of rule forcing her hand here, yielding guaranteed insight because some dice fell some way.

//One way to allow for successful original research is to rule that a positive Twilight experience while testing a theory can yield a guaranteed insight.//
While I would for the reasons above never allow such a rule, as a suggestion to a SG who has not yet other plans how to handle a given research project - especially one related to twilight - this is feasible. Given the number of likely twilights during breakthrough research, even then only a small part of controlled twilights should yield insight, though.

//It is obvious that Bonisagus could never have made the discoveries he did in fact make while following these rules.//
Of course he could! First the legacy of the priests of Mercury and second his collaborators among the founders of the Order provided him with plenty of guaranteed insight.

Kind regards,

Berengar

Hence them not killing Criamon, as he suggests.

So the twilight roll replaces the lab explosion and thus gives the Hermetic magus a better chance of survival. Thus, the gift of twilight is a genuine gift and Criamon was one of the main contributors to the Order, and not the peripheral figure I have always thought him.

Oops, my mistake.

Gene