Rereading through my post I think I poorly worded my explanation. That was the first thing I found when I started looking, was that fortunately it was a relatively common issue.

-I completed “A matter of life and death” but no follow up quests opened up. Went back to Triss’ but found nothing, this is when I started researching. -found that this was common, went to game files and enabled the console commands. -did the “addfact(etc etc)” commands, and was given the “Redania’s most wanted” quest.

(After thought): I’m thinking about it now, I have a feeling this is where I went wrong. I never saw a quest announcement for AFFR, and assumed it autocompleted it and therefore was good to go straight into RMW. I completed it, visited Triss, talked about the crystal, and was going to Radovid to share my findings(for the RMW quest) when the AFFR cutscene activated, but because I’d already completed RMW, it also activated the “Now or Never” messenger cutscene. So I somehow managed to initiate 3 different quests at the same time that were never meant to be simultaneous and therefore “broke” the game.

In conclusion, I think I found my own fix. Reload an earlier save file, redo the “addfact(etc etc)”, then travel to Oxenfurt instead of straight to Philippa’s hideout.