Maybe I am just one of those people who rolls really badly at least once per session.
Oh, that happens! I don't rule out Luck as unrealistic, though, or even especially see it as such – when you read accounts of real-world police and intelligence activity, a lot is ascribed to "luck" even by relatively rational, unsuperstitious people. The upshot is that most of the players bought Luck for their PCs, and the worst bad rolls of the night end up rerolled. We interpret those moments as "near things" where training kicked in and saved the Agent from a bad situation.
'The Company' can only survive as long as no one ever learns that it exists.
Yeah, that's a basic premise of the campaign.
If the intelligence community found out that there was an independent player there would be little reason not to destroy them outright.
Establishing an operator's independence isn't trivial, easy, or necessarily even possible, however. In the real world, there has never been a true extranational intelligence agency working in the name of generic justice – like comic-book superheroes – rather than in a national interest. Thus, there are exactly zero examples of how real-world services would react to such a thing, and also no prior evidence to lead the major players to suspect organized independents. The probable first and second assumptions, in no particular order, would be "gangsters" or "somebody's people, but man, their cover is strange." The way the Agents survive is to keep changing that cover story. They've yet to use the same pseudonyms, passports, or equipment twice; they've been very good about taking extra time to "clean" behind them; and they haven't operated in the same countries or against the same people for extended periods.
I realise the Characters don't know any intel that could hurt the company, but just admitting to its existence would be catastrophic.
I've made the executive decision that it would take a few separate cases of someone talking about the Company in several unrelated contexts to interrogators working for the same people before anybody would take it seriously and not assume it was the result of indoctrination by the Israelis, Russians, or whomever. I don't think that a private player would even be believed. Large intelligence services are very conservative, and have a long real-world tradition of denying the obvious-but-unlikely in favor of what they expected to find. For instance, during the Cold War, the CIA regularly blamed on the Soviets what was actually the work of others – including domestic political cells in some cases.
—
Anyway, the campaign's central conceit is that somehow, independents with enough money and influence to set up an organized "justice enforcement agency" did so secretly. I started the campaign with the "Clues" counter set to 0. It only goes up if the PCs seriously mess up. This doesn't mean "shoot"; this means, "expose a Company handler, shipment of Company equipment, or similar to actual police or intelligence officers." They players have roleplayed deception really well so far, making every single skill roll for stuff like Acting, Disguise, and Fast-Talk to pose as somebody else, and against Criminology, Forensics, Housekeeping, and Search to find and clean their own evidence. They've also operated through handlers and cutouts; nobody has yet to try to circumvent the buffer and deal directly with the backers. So the "Clues" counter is still set to 0.
Re: How close did they come in that session?
Oh, that happens! I don't rule out Luck as unrealistic, though, or even especially see it as such – when you read accounts of real-world police and intelligence activity, a lot is ascribed to "luck" even by relatively rational, unsuperstitious people. The upshot is that most of the players bought Luck for their PCs, and the worst bad rolls of the night end up rerolled. We interpret those moments as "near things" where training kicked in and saved the Agent from a bad situation.
'The Company' can only survive as long as no one ever learns that it exists.
Yeah, that's a basic premise of the campaign.
If the intelligence community found out that there was an independent player there would be little reason not to destroy them outright.
Establishing an operator's independence isn't trivial, easy, or necessarily even possible, however. In the real world, there has never been a true extranational intelligence agency working in the name of generic justice – like comic-book superheroes – rather than in a national interest. Thus, there are exactly zero examples of how real-world services would react to such a thing, and also no prior evidence to lead the major players to suspect organized independents. The probable first and second assumptions, in no particular order, would be "gangsters" or "somebody's people, but man, their cover is strange." The way the Agents survive is to keep changing that cover story. They've yet to use the same pseudonyms, passports, or equipment twice; they've been very good about taking extra time to "clean" behind them; and they haven't operated in the same countries or against the same people for extended periods.
I realise the Characters don't know any intel that could hurt the company, but just admitting to its existence would be catastrophic.
I've made the executive decision that it would take a few separate cases of someone talking about the Company in several unrelated contexts to interrogators working for the same people before anybody would take it seriously and not assume it was the result of indoctrination by the Israelis, Russians, or whomever. I don't think that a private player would even be believed. Large intelligence services are very conservative, and have a long real-world tradition of denying the obvious-but-unlikely in favor of what they expected to find. For instance, during the Cold War, the CIA regularly blamed on the Soviets what was actually the work of others – including domestic political cells in some cases.
—
Anyway, the campaign's central conceit is that somehow, independents with enough money and influence to set up an organized "justice enforcement agency" did so secretly. I started the campaign with the "Clues" counter set to 0. It only goes up if the PCs seriously mess up. This doesn't mean "shoot"; this means, "expose a Company handler, shipment of Company equipment, or similar to actual police or intelligence officers." They players have roleplayed deception really well so far, making every single skill roll for stuff like Acting, Disguise, and Fast-Talk to pose as somebody else, and against Criminology, Forensics, Housekeeping, and Search to find and clean their own evidence. They've also operated through handlers and cutouts; nobody has yet to try to circumvent the buffer and deal directly with the backers. So the "Clues" counter is still set to 0.