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SLA Industries is a Tabletop RPG originally published in the early 1990s by Glaswegian studio Nightfall Games. It's set in the World of Progress, a horrific Dystopia governed by Corrupt Corporate Executives [the eponymous SLA] under the guidance of Mr Slayer, an immortal plutocrat with a grand plan.
The game follows the exploits of SLA Operatives, highly-trained corporate troubleshooters that the company uses for everything from quashing internal subversion to clearing mutant pigs out of the sewers. Their principal area of operation is Mort City, an urban jungle the size of Eurasia, rain-soaked home to a churning mass of serial killers, terrorists, human traffickers, psychotic war veterans, killer cyborgs, cannibals, mutants, cannibal mutants, and the aforementioned pigs.
The game has had a difficult upbringing, and been subject to a sporadic release schedule on its journey through the hands of various publishers. Originally published by Nightfall themselves, it was taken up by Wizards Of The Coast during the mid-1990s before being dropped in favour of something Lighter And Softer. It then survived a couple of releases at Hogshead, and is now published by Cubicle 7 Entertainment .
In tone, it lies somewhere between Paranoia and Kult. Satirical treatment of consumerism, media glamorization of violence, and corporate bureaucracy coexists with brooding horror of various kinds, and the complex production history of the game has given it a variety of conflicting styles. A SLA Game Master will typically mash these together with enthusiasm, creating a unique variation of the gameworld.
SLA Industries provides examples of:
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer
- Armour Is Useless: Subverted. The bigger varieties can stop anti-vehicle rounds dead, whereas the most common pistol on Mort is essentially a BB Gun with great marketing, meaning that even weak armour can ignore it.
- Artificial Human: Angel, and the original intent behind Stormers in general.
- Ax Crazy: Too many to count, but the award for most Ax Crazy probably goes to the War Criminals, who return from tours of duty in the Company Militia with several fewer marbles than they arrived with. Upon arrival, the War Criminal's preferred MO is to abscond into the stygian slums that make up the bulk of Mort City, still in possession of their battlefield equipment, and begin a leisurely campaign of murderous terror.
- BFS: And Axe, and Club, and Scythe, and Chainsaw....
- Blood Sport: The premier sporting league in the World of Progress is the Contract Circuit: televised gladiatorial violence between contestants who, in their day jobs, work as hired killers.
- Came Back Wrong: Delia the Destroyer and anyone else who undergoes the L.A.D. process. And, according to The Truth, Stormers
- Chainsaw Good: Including the Chainaxe, a weapon much beloved among Mort's various psychopaths.
- Cloning Blues: Simultaneoulsy played straight and averted with Intruder one two seperate occasions; Once with Angel and later with Taarnish.
- Cosmic Horror: Rarely seen in most games, originally intended to be revealed in a long-running Metaplot that fell victim to the game's infrequent releases and Executive Meddling from Wizards.
- Crapsack World: Mostly driven by the Rule Of Scary, with touches of black comedy.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: The Manchines, human brains in mechanical bodies who went Ax Crazy shortly after SLA stopped maintaining them.
- Cyberpunk With A Chance Of Rain: Indoubtedly inspired by BladeRunner; it NEVER stops raining on planet Mort.
- Death Is A Slap On The Wrist - sort of. Operatives who are concerned about their prospects for posthumous career advancement can invest in a 'Life After Death' account, which entitles them to be picked up and resurrected via cutting-edge medical techniques in the event that they should die on the job. There are caveats, however: aside from the expense, a successful LAD operation allows a four-minute window between cessation of brain activity and arrival on the operating table, after which revival is impossible. Although a really fast evac helicopter is dispatched at the moment an Operative is critically injured, a customer who is unlucky enough to die in Lower Downtown, the Cannibal Sectors, or any similarly inaccessible or dangerous area cannot rely on timely evacuation. Refunds are not given in such cases. Additionally, Karma Division does not accept liability for any side-effects experienced as a result of the LAD process.
- Death World: The planet Mort is almost completely uninhabitable, and requires 'Atmosphere Generators' - each the size of a city - in order to maintain some semblance of a biosphere (and, coincidentally, keep the gravity in check). Huge swathes of Mort City itself are abandoned by civilised society, and have evolved a thriving ecosphere of giant insects, cannibals, mutants, and raw malevolence.
- Though operatives don't usually go there, the War Worlds are even worse. Once there, SLA Industries' soldiers have an average lifespan of a day.
- Dystopia: The secret police has three separate divisions, one of which is so secret that the other two barely know it exists.
- Fantastic Racism: Often arises as a low-level political issue. Humans are the dominant species, with the psionic Ebon, reptilian Shaktar and feline Wraith Raiders constituting racial minorities outside their respective homeworlds. Ebon, in particular, are loathed and feared due to their reality-warping abilities.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: Stormers, although most races get access to this if they use a particular medical drug from one of the supplements.
- Green Skinned Space Babe: Ebons are universally considered to be gentle and youthful looking with oddly coloured hair and eyes. Anyone taking the drug Lumo can apply to this trope also.
- Human Aliens: The Ebon, and their evil twins, the Brain Wasters. Externally, they look mostly-human if you ignore the glowing eyes. Biologically, however, they're distinct from humanity - and only Ebon/Brain Wasters are able to use the Ebb, which grants them Ultimate Cosmic Power at the expense of emotional instability and eventual transformation into a Necanthrope.
- Humans Are Bastards: So is everyone else, admittedly, but humans are by far the most successful at it.
- Immune To Drugs: The Frothers, a subspecies of humanity who become addicted to combat drugs in the womb. They regard pharmacological excess as a cultural right, and regularly consume doses of recreational and combat drugs that would kill an ordinary human twice.
- Im A Humanitarian: Many of the inhabitants / vermin of Mort's Cannibal Sectors.
- Magitek: Ebon powers are augmented by 'Science Friction' devices, made from raw Ebb energy coerced into a material form.
- Made Of Plasticine: Vevaphons, in a literal sense.
- Mind Rape: Involved in several of the Ebons' abilities, heavily implied in a description of the implantation process for Finance Chips, the implied M.O. few a number of the NP Cs on Players and each other, and just one of the tools used to create Halloween Jack.
- Mind Screw: Arguably the intended way to run the game.
- Moral Dissonance: Operatives - the group to which the Player Characters belong - are generally depicted as arrogant bullies or worse.
- No One Could Survive That: Mister Slayer, Intruder, Senti, Halloween Jack and Digger in particular, though also attributed to the faceless agents throughout the Internal Affairs Departments.
- Powered Armor: Plenty of these.
- Power Fist: More than one example, including the "Mutilator Fist".
- Proud Warrior Race Guy: The Shaktar, eight-foot dreadlocked lizards who adhere to a samurai-esque code of honour.
- Really Big Gun, BFG: Few firearms in the game do not fall into either of these categories, although fashions change rapidly; guns on Mort are aspirational items in the way that cars are in Real Time. Ironically, although only Operatives are licensed to use 'serious' firearms, their use by same is frowned upon (and taxed) by the company, since exotic melee weapons look better on TV.
- Serial Killer: And how! This may be the only RPG where the phrase "serial killer epidemic" could be (and was) used with a straight face.
- Shape Shifter Baggage: Averted. Vevaphons cannot gain or lose mass through shape shifting, and even altering their form in extreme ways can lead to permanent injury.
- Sinister Scythe: DPB manufactures the 'Flick-Scythe', a staff with an extendable scythe blade that oscillates for extra damage.
- Super Soldier: A variety of vat-grown 'Stormers' are the SLA's foremost contribution to the science of warfare; later models have also been pressed into service in heavy industry, popular entertainment, and prostitution. The original '313' model, as well as some later combat variations and a newer, shapeshifting design, are available as player characters.
- These Are Things Man Was Not Meant To Know: 'The Truth', which is the code-name for SLA's long-running metaplot that ultimately explains everything that has (and occasionally has not..,.) happened in the World of Progress.
- Kinda subverted, in that The Truth HAS been revealed to the playing public after Nightfall Games admitted that they would never get around to publishing SLA Industries as they would have liked. It's.... complicated, and no longer canon under the new developers, but it still applies to characters and settings in the older books.
- Turned Against Their Masters: Carriens, Manchines, Scavs / Agitator Stormers, Domingo Dogs... if there's anything Mr. Slayer is good at, it's creating things that go horribly, psychopathically against him.
- Vibroweapon
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The Ebon, an alien race who use arcane mathematics to set fire to things and make people's heads explode, eventually get called to shed their material bodies and undertake a mysterious spiritual journey, after which they go One Winged Angel, becoming prey to their darkest hidden urges and turning into horrible monsters. With living shoulder-guns. That shoot Mind Rape.
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