The lost seasons don't have to be about things the magus has made in the past. It could be how much seasons he will need to spend to fix the results of his disaster.
And considering that the current result would most likely kill them outright...
But these would be guidelines, to be adjusted by the SG to take into account the actual context of the disaster. The SG might decide to inflict a minor flaw on the magus in addition to suffering a Heavy Wound, counting this being worth 4 seasons (or more), instead of killing the familiar. The guideline is just to give a scale of how severe the cost is.
Instead of automatic wounds, I think toning down the damage would be best. Something that would let the magi react with a fast-cast defense to save himself, possibly. Perhaps a stress die + magnitude of the lab total would be more reasonable, yet still dangerous.
I enjoy them. Yes, it puts pressure on the story guide, but that's also true of many things a player might do. It's true of twilight scars... I've been building myself a chart to handle those when I lack inspiration, I admit I would not want to get rid of them.
I ran a short story a few months ago when one of the magi had Special or Story Event during an experimentation. He was experimenting on a Mentem spell, so I had the magus suffer from nightmares and sleepwalk to an unexplored part of the cave network under the covenant, involving something about the magical aura of the covenant (the story is here).
Personally, I find such stories interesting. Not a burden at all, particularly in a PbP format. Certainly be more difficult to handle during a tabletop game.
Side effects
1 - Clarify if the effect still works or not. Might be fun if the sigil part is so in-twined into the spell that even those that learn from the labtext experience your sigil.
Also maybe re-work it to use the same structure with addl risk modifiers
Discovery
Possibly add that you have an insight point and that you can write a tractatus about it in MT
ps. I still would prefer addl botch dices to be embedded here than generated via the supernatural aura.
+1 to the ideas of extra time & wounds
Disaster would also introduce lab warping values. Add a lab negative. Affect the aura in the lab. Make the lab inaccessible for a time.
I've never been a fan of a story event happening with a 1/10 chance. Maybe 1/100? I'd like to see some more zany suggestions than just something so vague. Like, if the story event had it's own table of suggestions? That might be cool and give the PC and GM something to work with.
I'd also suggest adding a line such as "modify this whole extraordinary results table to suit your saga's needs."
In general, more zaniness and less danger of dying would be good. I'd love to see expanded tables with more types of results, including more suggestions.
The death of a Magus based on random chance of a die roll never sits well with me so yeah changing that to wounds or some sort of penalty or something sounds fun.
The idea of a story event happening is cool, but the fact that it has to be designed somewhat on the fly is a bit iffy. BUT the idea of there being a special event chart does sound cool. Though I want positive special events too.
Some issues causing only Personal issues and others causing Covenant issues are cool.
But yeah, I for one would never let a single roll ruin / destroy everything, with no ability to resist or turn it fun.
I like @Ezechiel3571's ideas; bad for the magus, but easy for the troupe. Serious damage to the magus is functionally equivalent, in that it costs vis, time, or both, but narratively different.
I feel that Disasters should not damage the rest of the covenant without a story event; I think that could lead to undesirable within-troupe dynamics.
I don't think story events should disappear, but the troupe should have the option to ignore them, and that option should be explicit in the table. (Incidentally, I tend to think of story events as being sufficiently disruptive to end the season of research. Adventure xp instead! But I suppose they do not have to be.)
Still thinking about this, so please keep posting if you have ideas or comments.
I love story events being created during downtime or end-of-session, but when my game sessions involve finishing up a plot for 45 minutes then advancing time and someone immediately rolls Special or Story event - sometimes twice! - the game does derail while we figure out what we have to decide.
Some kind of guide would be helpful, because I have no idea what the scale of 'special or story event' means. Did we wake up the dragon in the basement? Did my Merinita Creo Ignem study accidentally make a phoenix faerie? Did I realize that the vis used was infernal or divine? Did I discover my master's old notes on how he designed the lighting system in the main hall? DID I FIND OUT BLACKTHORN IS SCRYING ON US? There's no suggested metric.
I also wouldn't be adverse to delaying the result - 'special or story event that evolves over the next stress die weeks, at the storyguide's discression it may appear immediately'.
I admit I'm somewhat biased against the Story event because every other experiment someone is going to roll that stupid 'create extra plot with no guidelines' result.
There may be, but we are only making errata-level changes at the moment, and the higher priority changes at that level were (presumably) made a couple of years ago.
Statistically, this is not the case… But I understand the feeling.
That's up to the troupe. The rules are not intended to specify that. If the troupe wants to use the experiment to introduce the main plot for the next year, that's fine, and if they want it to be small, that's fine too.
I am wondering about options that say "Story event or X", so that there is an explicit alternative if the troupe do not want to mess about with a new story at that point.
Something like "Story event, or the magus takes two Heavy Wounds from an explosion. The story event can be anything, and storyguides might want to think about plot lines that could be triggered by a laboratory experiment. The story does not have to start immediately, so it is enough to have the basic idea, and then flesh it out between sessions when a magus rolls this result."
I just wanted to give the feedback that I don't think this is something that needs to be fiddled with at this point. It doesn't even rise to the level of errata.
That's reasonable. One possible answer to "does this need tweaking?" is "no", and that is the conclusion we have reached for some questions. It doesn't appear to be the general opinion on this one, though.
When I designs system for RPG, I keep in mind that for first time SG discovering the system, the proposal "up to the SG to create an adventure" can be a daunting task, so having a simple, straight forward-to-implement outcome is preferable.
If there is the little sentence " this things happens or an adventure opens up", at least the SG who finds inconvenient to improvise an adventure on the spot knows what is the alternative.
It is always better than ask the player to reroll the dice and possibly get a worse outcome, leaving a frustrated/disappointed player.
Seasoned SG will always come up, if/when needed, with an house rule and will know how to accommodate the system for their needs.
It's not that I dislike Story Event. I've just known it to happen more than statistically propable.
Maybe it should be, so that resolving the Story Event leads to the experiment counting as No Special Effect, so it works. But ignoring it leads to No Benefit?
I can see the value of tweaking lab explosions damage, but I concur with silveroak that changing Special or story to something different is beyond the scope of errata. There are house rules for that. Of course, if you want to publish a new book that expands that chart, be my guess!
I would not want to get rid of them.