Security Clearance - why is it worth anything?

[Tinman]

Also IIRC it's security info above another person of the same rank/grade.

[Dwarf99]

SC also strongly implies that your rank has some imputation on having clearance, by stating that you have clearance not normally attributed to someone of your rank. Some people in the military might not need it as such. Then you get into scenarios where it's valuable to a mercenairy, not so much to the actual soldiers he's working with.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

I'm reading Security Clearance, and to me it seems like unless your campaign is going to involve characters misusing their positions of trust, there is no value in return for the points of this trait.

But maybe my imagination is failing me. Would anyone like to comment?

I think it's of some general use in "GURPS Conspiracy X".

[Peter Knutsen]

I'm very unhappy with what several posters have replied, which is that Security Clearance represents that the character has knowledge.

That makes no sense. In GURPS, knowledge is represented via skills, and the relevant "family" of skills for this particular kind of knowledge is Hidden Lore, e.g. Hidden Lore, possibly (probably) with a required (cheap) UB as a prerequisite.

No, Security Clearance ought to be a social advantage, not an internal ("has knowledge in the brain") type advantage.

[thrash]

It is. It's just a social advantage that gives you access to information that is otherwise unavailable, (mostly) regardless of your skill level. (A sufficiently skilled person may be able to infer classified information from open sources.)

It's a prerequisite for knowing things: it determines whether you can make the skill roll at all for prior knowledge. In social settings, it determines whether your influence roll is mildly difficult ("Do you have a need to know?") or damn near impossible (<fnord>You are not cleared for that information.</fnord>).

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I'm very unhappy with what several posters have replied, which is that Security Clearance represents that the character has knowledge.

That makes no sense. In GURPS, knowledge is represented via skills, and the relevant "family" of skills for this particular kind of knowledge is Hidden Lore, e.g. Hidden Lore, possibly (probably) with a required (cheap) UB as a prerequisite.

No, Security Clearance ought to be a social advantage, not an internal ("has knowledge in the brain") type advantage.

Security Clearance is a social Advantage which pertains to obtaining information. Some of that information could take the form of a Hidden Lore skill, but much of it is more a sort of high-value trivia. There's no point cost for having a particular fact fact that you've been given.

Security Clearance is not the Advantage of having this stuff in your brain, per se, but having stuff in your brain is the effect.

[Pragmatic]

Having just read all the Laundry Files (Charles Stross), I'm curious:

How would you represent access to specific clearances?

E.g., "Case Jennifer Morgue" deals with the Deep Ones, IIRC--various interactions with them, the deals struck, that sort of thing.

It's sure knowledge, rather than suppositions and theories from "Hidden Lore" (I guess...?).

[doulos05]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I'm very unhappy with what several posters have replied, which is that Security Clearance represents that the character has knowledge.

That makes no sense. In GURPS, knowledge is represented via skills, and the relevant "family" of skills for this particular kind of knowledge is Hidden Lore, e.g. Hidden Lore, possibly (probably) with a required (cheap) UB as a prerequisite.

No, Security Clearance ought to be a social advantage, not an internal ("has knowledge in the brain") type advantage.

Security Clearance is a social advantage. It's he social advantage that confers an informational advantage that makes the difference between an Mechanic (High Performance Aircraft)-20 saying:

Without SC (player rolls at -2 for familiarity): It looks like the airplane he stole is pushing it's performance envelope. We may be able to break something if we make him climb or dive fast enough.

With SC: Take us up to 40,000 feet, get him behind us, and dive as fast as you can. If he dives after us too hard, he'll shear the control surfaces off the tail.

Both came to the same conclusion (the planes performance envelope is more limited than it would seem to an amateur), and recommended the same basic action (make him dive or climb too fast), but SC granted the player more detail on how and let him roll against a higher number (because he has seen this planes before and its classified test flights)

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

How would you represent access to specific clearances?

Base clearance plus a Perk per compartment?

(In the US system, this would be "Top Secret" clearance plus access to individual SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information) areas. This is what Jack Ryan means in the Red October movie when he says "Admiral, I need to kick open a new compartment." He already has the high clearance level, but level alone isn't enough to grant access to the good stuff.)

[cosmicfish]

Security Clearance is not especially well-defined, in part because the details can vary so much between organizations. If we are talking about the US, for example, then SC would need to come with a passel of Taboo Traits (or a Secret representing the concealment of those Traits), while in the old USSR a great deal of sins might be overlooked for someone with demonstrated party loyalty!

But ultimately, the virtue of SC is that you can get information and facility/personnel access if you have demonstrated need. It gets tricky because you can ALSO get that same access in most cases even without the clearance if the need is sufficient... which describes a great many gaming situations.

So it really depends on the situation:

If the characters are going to be performing a task for a given organization that requires access to sensitive materials, then it should pretty much be a campaign advantage and (as someone already noted) the cost is then irrelevant.

If the characters are going to be operating outside the scope of that organization (i.e., the "need" is only their own), then Contacts better represents access to the information - without the benefit to the organization, they need someone (the Contact) to bend/break the rules and give them the access.

If a given player wants to have knowledge of a given area beyond what is public, without access to NEW information, then that is a Hidden Lore skill to me.

Just about the only time I could see a single player having SC is when they represent someone whose job requires them to work with uncleared people - perhaps an FBI agent on a multi-jurisdictional task force or the like.