The thing is, it has been shown before, that some of the research becomes available not because we undertook prior research, but because Snorri was inspired by the events in the game (e.g. translation rune).
I find this particularly rewarding and true to life, and that it makes sense. Snorri gets an idea, because he encounters something that needs solving/understanding.
And yeah this is fine, we have no control over it and its just ya know. Its a character thing.
I like your ideas of chains of research, especially the part about capstones and combining, but it would too artificial if there were only some predestined limited amount of chains.
There should be odds and ends that don't fit in nicely (like the hearthstone you mentioned).
As for the backlog, I don't think we should be able to cut it permanantly to size.
Opportunity costs make our choices worthwhile.
If some venues of research don't interest us, even should they have been available from the start, they never get done.
Now, vaxing and vaning of research amount (in accord with quest events), so that we are periodically incentivized and rewarded to focus on cutting it to size, is something that would work nicely.
In the end, I agree with Boney's take on the matter. Research should always have some backlog.
So for a QM perspective here's a thing though. Having a constantly updating, or living tech tree tracking document is hell. Its hell to bookkeep.
And yeah, like the Hearthstones. Weird odds and ends should exist as like little side tangents on this thicket tree.
Now I'm not discussing cutting it down in the context of "It is smaller now and it will Stay That Way" because I fundamentally agree with the premise presented in your idea about ideas spontaneously hitting Snorri. Waxing and waning research is what I'm after here and what I am saying is that given the evidence presented so far that Materials Research is how we achieve a waning and that achieving a waning of the research category, making it smaller for a time, is something we can strive for so we have a smaller pool of things to focus on.
The further argument I am making has very little to actually do with quest specific details in
this quest and has more to do with Questing as a game type because it is system commentary for Quests as a whole. Motivations and statements of how we spend our time, as veekie notes, are something I consider critical to Questing and to this Quest albeit for different reasons. In
this quest it's important because balancing our time is a central conceit of the game: How do we interact with the Runesmiths dilemma of disappearing into their workshops for extended periods. In
Quests it has to do with attracting and keeping players because players come to quests looking to build and fulfill specific motivations. If they expend the effort and make the statement and take the actions and the resolution of their motivation does not occur then there's a problem right?
This extends beyond this question and discussion about research in this quest, to every system in this quest. It may be a problem of communication between player and GM, on either end about intent or motivation. Or a problem with certain base assumptions about how things need to be run and so on and so forth.
As I said I believe we'd essentially need all of the time and/or the quests scope to expand in order to finish every single chain soulcake has in mind and that that is good design because we have beside them other tools which let us manipulate the size of the category if we wish to spend the time doing that and getting goodies out of it. To put it another way: we have these long chains that we can always sink time into and they will grow and spawn new ones as they do, and then besides them we have things which are much shorter and give us lesser goodies with much less investment along with cutting down the size of the category itself and enhancing our other actions like all research does and that this is good design. And in terms of opportunity cost, choosing to spend time clearing out shorter things in a category instead of focusing on the longer term projects or on projects in another category entirely are also valid forms of opportunity cost. They meet the definition of it of "Doing something at the cost of another thing".
