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Old 03-25-2023, 06:23 PM   #1
johndallman
Night Watchman
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Security Clearance

Security Clearance [5, 10 or 15] is a mundane social advantage. A government or other powerful organisation trusts you with secrets more important than would normally be disclosed to someone of your Rank, Status or other kind of importance. This advantage first appeared in GURPS Terradyne for 3e.

You don’t have to pay for Security Clearance to know things that are normal for your importance within the organisation. The chief NCO of a special operations force is cleared to know all about the troops, equipment and other resources of their unit, and that comes with the job. However, if that NCO needs to know details about the intelligence agents who report on another country’s secrets, that would definitely require Security Clearance: that information would not normally be given to someone who might be captured by an enemy. That means that most real-world people with “security clearance” don’t have this advantage: their backgrounds were checked as a prerequisite for their appointment. Prudent organisations will do very comprehensive checks in advance on individuals who might need to receive sensitive information on short notice.

The usual levels of Security Clearance are:
  • “Need to know” access to a small set of secrets [5]. A submarine officer knows their boat’s capabilities, but does not know all the engineering secrets that enable them to be achieved.
  • “Need to know” access to a wide range of secrets, or free access to a narrow range of secrets [10]. A submarine designer needs to know a wide range of engineering secrets, so that they can be integrated into a design; a national desk officer in an intelligence agency needs free access to information about her country’s spies in the other country, so that she can avoid clashes between their work.
  • Free access to a broad range of secrets [15]. This is for cinematic secret agents, who have plot armour against interrogation, or very senior government officials who want to know everything.
Security Clearance will always vanish if you talk to the wrong people about your special knowledge. It can also be incompatible with disadvantages. Characters who might be coerced or blackmailed (Addiction, Debt, Secret, or relatives in an enemy country) or aren’t reliably mentally stable (Greed, Sadism, Paranoia) might be denied Security Clearance, but this depends on the campaign and the agency. There is a ‑50% limitation for clearance granted by smaller organisations, such as city governments or smaller corporations. Security Clearance with that limitation might well not work as a prerequisite for a legal Alternate Identity, or for learning skills like Brainwashing, Cryptography, Electronic Warfare, or Intelligence Analysis. In some settings, Security Clearance is required for those traits.

In GURPS supplements, Security Clearance is, naturally, an option on templates for agents of large organisations, as well as cutting-edge engineers, and those who manage them, or clean up after them. Fantasy has some useful examples of low-TL uses of the advantage, while Horror gives MIBs the [15] level. Madness Dossier uses this advantage for characters deeply immersed in the Project, and several Magic supplements can require it for access to specific spells. SEALS in Vietnam requires all SEALs to have this advantage at [5], which represents them being much better-informed than most people in the setting, while having fairly low Rank. Supers adds the Informal, ‑50% limitation, and Zombies don’t have clearances, unless the seting is very unusual.

If all the PCs in a campaign will have the same level of Security Clearance, it can be omitted from character sheets and bookkeeping. The occult WWII campaign worked that way, and the characters built up considerable knowledge of Axis magical capabilities, while carefully avoiding learning about Allied resources, magical or otherwise. We handed in all the codebooks we recovered, but were never told about the outcomes, and were quite happy about that. Applying need-to-know to yourself is satisfying in its own way.

How has Security Clearance played in your games?
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