GURPS Black OPS- X-files and Delta Green setting for Gurps!

Link to video on Rumble: https://rumble.com/v6u3kr5-gurps-black-ops-setting-book.html

This one’s been sitting on my shelf for years. I pick it up every now and then, flip to a random page, and remember just how weird and brilliant it is. GURPS Classic: Black Ops isn’t just a book about secret agents fighting monsters. It’s a full-blown paranoia-fueled campaign setting where the monsters are real, the aliens are winning, and your job is to make sure nobody ever finds out.

It starts off in the sewers. Literally. Page four drops you into a mission gone wrong. There’s blood, panic, a flashlight dying fast, and something crawling closer that should not exist. That first vignette sets the tone perfectly. You are not here to do paperwork or chat with NPCs. You are here to kill the thing with too many legs before it tears the city apart.

What makes this book hit different is how it takes itself just seriously enough. It reads like military horror fiction wrapped in layers of classic GURPS crunch. But then it turns around and casually drops a lore bomb about Truman, Einstein, and Howard Hughes meeting on a yacht to found a secret organization dedicated to protecting the world from supernatural threats. That’s not me being dramatic. That’s actually in the book. Page nine. Go look.

You play as elite agents from a secret group called the Company. You’ve got departments with names like Combat, Science, Intelligence, Security, and Technology. Each one has its own mission, its own culture, and its own way of doing things. And they do not always get along. The Science guys hate how Combat handles everything with explosives. The Combat grunts don’t trust the nerds. The Security guys get on everyone’s nerves with their constant checklist questions and last-minute mission aborts. It’s a workplace drama with aliens.

The Company itself is just a small part of a larger structure. Behind the curtain you’ve got Argus, the twelve-person group that started it all. They meet in secret, send coded messages to the department heads, and never reveal who they are. You probably don’t even believe they exist. That’s part of the fun.

One of the strongest parts of the book is the Academy section. Recruits train in a facility so brutal that almost half of them die before graduation. You are not playing rookies. You’re playing survivors. You came through hell just to get the badge, and now your job is to go out there and stop things that most people think are urban legends. This gives your campaign a built-in tone. No one is unsure of their role. You are trained. You are dangerous. You are expendable.

Character creation in Black Ops leans hard into cinematic power. You’re meant to be better than average across the board. There are templates for each department, loaded with skills, advantages, and some drawbacks that remind you these characters are human. But not by much. You can build the guy who fights dragons with a laser rifle or the woman who hacks alien satellites from a stolen van. Or the psychic who has seen the future and still signs up for the mission anyway.

Speaking of aliens and monsters, the bestiary in this book is massive. You get Greys. You get Brainsuckers. You get creatures with names like Ice Weasels and Brainsquids. There are vampires and demons and ghosts too. The variety is incredible, and they’re not just stat blocks. These are threats designed to mess with your players. Some have biological horror. Some lean cosmic. Some just want to rip your head off and eat your memory.

And then there’s the gear. Tech is wild in this setting. You’ve got cybernetics, prototype weapons, alien hardware, psychic shielding devices, teleportation experiments, and enough high-powered firepower to flatten a city block. Your gun might not be legal in any known country. Doesn’t matter. You are not supposed to exist anyway.

What I love most is how the book encourages cinematic pacing. There are rules for spotlight moments, dramatic tension, and even optional blow-through mechanics that let your bullets punch through torsos when it matters. This is still GURPS at its core, but it leans into spectacle without apology. You can tell it wants to be played fast and loud.

If you’re a fan of games like Delta Green or X-COM, this one’s worth a look. It’s pulpy but grim. It’s stylish but grounded. It’s the kind of setting where the players know the world is ending but still show up to fight it anyway.

That’s the job. You don’t retire from the Company. You just stop reporting in.

So if you’re in the mood for monsters, men in black, and a whole lot of mayhem, GURPS Black Ops might be your new favorite conspiracy.

---