[Basic] Advantage of the Week: Security Clearance

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by thrash

Note that the examples below pretty much all contradict this. It's hard to see how one could be an effective submarine officer or design engineer, or an intelligence agency desk officer, without knowing those secrets.

I'm inclined to agree. As distinct from that cipher clerk, who could do the job of decrypting/encrypting and relaying even if they didn't speak English; they gain access to the knowledge as a consequence of the job, but having the knowledge is not necessary for them to do the job.

Originally Posted by thrash

If you are denied a Security Clearance based on the contents of a Secret, it's arguably not secret any more. Losing an existing Clearance might be a consequence of having a Secret exposed, however -- or not, if the potential for blackmail is gone, too. Having an intact Secret might also be a reason to avoid undergoing a background investigation in the first place.

While I agree with your general point, I can picture a clearance being denied on the basis that "there's something dodgy about him, we don't know what, but we have plenty of people to choose from for this job". In effect, we think there's a Secret but we don't know what it is.

Originally Posted by thrash

What are the (game mechanical) consequences of not having the same level of Security Clearance as the rest of your party? Being (say) the Russian intelligence liaison in a NATO team tracking a world-threatening supervillain, or the civilian specialist called in to assist a group of special operators for this one mission. It's effectively a disadvantage.

In every group I've played in, the information would be shared among the party anyway, unless the game were about secrets - e.g. something like Cold City or Paranoia.