I've reached the "Lock and Key" mission, and I've encountered a problem. I walk over to the guardsman in the sewer, and I initiate a conversation with him. He tells his subordinates to bring over a ladder, but they never do. My understanding of this problem is that because I meditated until midnight using the campfire right behind them, I accidentally moved past a cutscene trigger that I can't reset without loading an earlier save. Problem is, I have no earlier saves.

Is there a way to fix this without starting the game over? Are there any savefile editors I could use to manually force the trigger to reset? I'd really prefer not to have to start over from the beginning.

I've left and re-entered the area, yes. I've also tried restarting, updating the installer [in case there was a patch], meditating elsewhere, standing around to wait for them to just walk up, etc. I think I've tried everything that can be tried short of loading an earlier save, which I can't do.

I'll bookmark your link in case no one comes up with a solution, though. Thanks for that.

This is pretty likely. It's a glitch that has aifak never been fixed. People often resort to older savegames or replacement saves to solve it.

If you're trying to trigger it again, you can go there after 23:00, it doesn't have to be midnight, but I fear it will be of no avail. The Witcher offers no in-game console to alter the running game and I know of no easy savegame editing that would do the trick, but maybe someone else does.