SLA Industries
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| SLA Industries | |
| Designer | Dave Allsop |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Nightfall Games |
| Publication date | 1993 |
| Genre(s) | Gothic, cyberpunk, dystopia, splatterpunk |
| System | Custom (2D10) |
SLA Industries is a role-playing game first published in 1993 by Nightfall Games in Glasgow, Scotland. The game combined concepts inspired by a range of song lyrics, aesthetics and ideas from the Industrial music scene, cyberpunk fiction (including Blade Runner and Max Headroom), Anime (including Akira and Appleseed), and the growing cultural obsession with the media (including 24 hour news services and the Gladiator TV Show) in order to create an ultra-dystopian far-flung future in which the 99.9% of the known universe is either directly owned by, or indirectly controlled by, the eponymous "SLA Industries" corporation. It is also noted as having a distinctive flavour due to the influences of the Glasgow / Scottish upbringing of the writers, as opposed to the more pure Americana influences of other games written around this period.
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[edit] Setting
The SLA (pron. "Slay") Industries corporation itself was run by a weakly godlike creature called "Mr. Slayer", whose upper management team included a number of other creatures like himself, such as "Intruder", "Senti" and "Preceptor Teeth". The corporation was headquartered on "Mort City", a densely populated city-sprawl larger than Eurasia and surrounded by the urban ruins of the "Cannibal Sectors", all located on a vast planet (also called "Mort") that had been stripped of its natural resources to the point that the ecology had been utterly destroyed. SLA Industries controlled an undefined but vast number of planets in pursuit of Mr. Slayer's mysterious grand plan, the "World of Progress". Much of the setting was surreally disturbing, and tended to provoke as many questions as it answered.
Players took the role of freelance employees of SLA Industries living in Mort City, taking care of odd jobs assigned to them by the corporation. These jobs usually involved keeping the peace -- everything from hunting down serial killers, clearing out monsters from the sewers under the city and foiling terrorists to bodyguarding celebrities, quashing riots, assassinating irritating civilians and generally making sure the public toed the line. Appearance and style were emphasized in the game world as much as combat ability, because everything was televised, and a character's television ratings were often more important to his career than his abilities. Later expansions to the game also let players play as celebrity gladiators called Contract Killers. As a role-playing experience, the game tended to be predisposed towards splatterpunk horror, noir, dark satire, and/or gunbunny high action. However the byzantine political nature of the setting along with detailed environment allowed for more thriller and politics based campaigns should the players wish it.
Along with humans, playable races included the drug-addicted mutant humans called "Frothers", the stealthy feline "Wraith Raiders", the formidably violent saurian "Shaktar", and the only two 'Science Friction' / pseudo magic using races: the emotionally sensitive elfin humanoid race called the Ebon along with their more sadistic & violent genetic offshoot - the "Brainwasters". There were also several varied nightmarish biogenetic vat-grown warrior races called Stormers that had been built by SLA to fight in their endless wars.
On the basis of pure game mechanics the races were considered by many to be unbalanced, with Humans having a significant 'numbers' disadvantage to members of any other race.[citation needed] Additionally the issue of the Ebons and Brainwasters being the only races able to use the powerful Science Friction powers, and later being able to evolve / devolve into the uniquely powerful demonic "Necanthropes", has caused further concerns. However the balance is felt by the more experienced players to be found in the setting material rather than in the game mechanics, with many references to the greater ease of social / employment progression for humans and even the environment being ergonomically designed for the human sized races being seen as the 'soft' balancing of the game.
[edit] Publication
SLA Industries was first published independently in 1993. The game was later bought by Wizards of the Coast late in 1994, after their success with Magic: The Gathering. It was later republished by Nightfall Games Ltd and distributed by Hogshead Publishing, until Hogshead was sold to its current owners, and since 2003 Cubicle 7 Entertainment has been working on producing new material. A small minority of fans of the game hoped that Nightfall Games would then re-release the game again under the popular d20 system, but a d20 version never materialized.
[edit] The Writers' Bible
Nightfall Games produced the SLA Industries Writers Bible, sometimes simply referred to as The Bible or The Truth, to allow freelance writers to grasp the complicated background of the game. The terms of the associated non-disclosure agreement required that the contents of the document remain secret.
Following an extended hiatus in production of official SLA Industries material, editor Tim Dedopulos released the bible to the members of the SLA Industries email discussion list in 1998. The fans' reaction to The Truth was not entirely warm, and the remaining members of Nightfall Games made it clear that further redistribution of the bible was not permitted except with their explicit permission.
The writers have since made it clear that the bible was not intended for mass consumption - it had not been worked on or tested enough to be up to the same level of quality as the published material, and was only there to keep the work of disparate authors consistent with the intentions of Nightfall Games. It has also been explained that the process of revealing The Truth was originally to have happened over the course of several publications, each one containing more elements of an increasingly refined version of the back story.
In 2005 Angus Abranson at Cubicle 7 allowed the re-release of this old Writers Bible along with the information that this is no longer the Truth used internally for further development of material.
[edit] "The Truth"
According to the Nightfall Games backstory, all universes are born from the minds of chosen individuals in already-existing universes. The SLA Industries universe was actually created inside the mind of a modern-day man from Kilmarnock, Scotland named Brent Walker, who brought it into reality as a parallel dimension with the aid of both a drug called "Reathanol" and his own objectively-sentient alternate personality, "Tide". The creation process killed Brent on Earth, and sucked his remains into the SLA universe. Tide had also been drawn in. Brent discovered that Tide had been poisoning his supposed utopian creation, and the two fought. Brent, after striking a blow to Tide, cutting off his nose, was ultimately defeated and became a servant of "Slayer", known as "Intruder". After Intruder manifested, all that was left of Brent, all the hate and anger and bitterness, was banished to imprisonment on the planet "White Earth", where he became "Bitterness", a rarely mentioned nemesis of the game's background. Tide, mutilated by Brent during their struggle, became Mr. Slayer. Bitterness is featured in the inside cover story of every SLA Industries game book. Extremely vague hints and clues to the nature of "the Truth" are given throughout SLA Industries in the form of hidden references to David Bowie songs such as Diamond Dogs, songs by The Pixies and posters in the background of some of the in-house artwork.
[edit] Product Line
- SLA Industries Main Rulebook
- Karma Sourcebook
- GM Screen
- Mort Sourcebook
- The Key of Delhyread Scenario
- The Contract Directory Sourcebook
- Cannibal Sector One Sourcebook
- Hunter Sheets Issue 1 Supplement
[edit] References
- Wallis, James (1994). "S.L.A. Industries". Inter*action (1): 118–122. ISSN 1353-4548. Review
