History TabletopGame / SLAIndustries

* MixAndMatch: One RPG-reviewing site said about the game that "Everyone who attempts to describe SLA Industries ends up comparing it to something else."

-->'''Glenn "Carnage" Berry''': "It's like sex. The first few times are the biggest thrill in the world, then you stop for some reason and you miss it a hundred times worse than when you never did it. Then you start doing it regularly, and it becomes and part of your everyday life... I mean, you look forward to it, and it's good, but it's not the same as when you first started. Then you find you are doing it less and less until one day it's really good because you did something different. Then
for a few years you look for the different thing. Then you look at yourself one day and [[CrossesTheLineTwice you're wearing a strange costume and a weird mask and chains and things...]]"

* CyberpunkWithAChanceOfRain: Indoubtedly inspired by Film/BladeRunner; it NEVER stops raining on planet Mort.
* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist - 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.

* SingleBiomePlanet: The home planet of the Wraith Raiders is an Ice World. Other Wraith Raider-controlled planets are Ice Planets as well.

In tone, it lies somewhere between TabletopGame/{{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 GameMaster will typically mash these together with enthusiasm, creating a unique variation of the game world.

In tone, it lies somewhere between TabletopGame/{{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 GameMaster will typically mash these together with enthusiasm, creating a unique variation of the gameworld.

''SLA Industries'' provides examples of:

** 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''. On the [[BeyondTheImpossible really scary]] War Worlds, this can drop to just ''20 minutes''.

* CloningBlues: Simultaneously played straight and averted with Intruder on two seperate occasions; Once with Angel and later with Taarnish.

** 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''.

* CosmicHorror: 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 ExecutiveMeddling from Wizards.

* CyberpunkWithAChanceOfRain: Indoubtedly inspired by BladeRunner; it NEVER stops raining on planet Mort.

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 GameMaster will typically mash these together with enthusiasm, creating a unique variation of the gameworld.

* CyberpunkWithAChanceOfRain: Indoubtedly inspired by {{BladeRunner}}; it NEVER stops raining on planet Mort.

* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill : Several applicants, among them Slayer and Bitterness (obviously), Sigmartyr, Trasher, Halloween Jack, Intruder and the Kilneck...

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 the company's capital of 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.

* ReallyBigGun, {{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.

* {{Dystopia}}: Even on Mort (the capital planet of SLA Industries and thus the one world that you could expect to be a prosperous, secure stronghold), there are all kinds of rival company terrorists, gangs, drugs, environmental degredation, serial killers, unethical experiments going wrong in the worst ways, no less than three divisions of brutal secret police, and massive regions of urban blight which have been abandoned to barbarism. Oh, and [[BeyondTheImpossible 85% of the population is on welfare]].

* HopelessWar: SLA Industries has been at war with DarkNight and Thresher for centuries with no end in sight, and the War Worlds are whole planets that have been consumed by conflict between two (or all three) of the powers. It's explicitly mentioned that whenever one War World is finally abandoned, you can rest assured that another will fall into the spotlight.

* CloningBlues: Simultaneoulsy played straight and averted with Intruder on two seperate occasions; Once with Angel and later with Taarnish.

* ImmuneToDrugs: 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.

* SerialKiller: And how! This may be the only setting ever where the phrase "serial killer epidemic" could be (and was) used with a straight face.

** 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.

* {{Vibroweapon}}

''SLA Industries'' is a TabletopRPG 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 Executive}}s [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.

* AbsurdlySpaciousSewer

* AxCrazy: Too many to count, but the award for ''most'' AxCrazy 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.

* CloningBlues: Simultaneoulsy played straight and averted with Intruder one two seperate occasions; Once with Angel and later with Taarnish.

* {{Dystopia}}: The secret police has three separate divisions, one of which is so secret that the other two barely know it exists.

* HumanAliens: 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 [[OneWingedAngel Necanthrope]].
* HumansAreBastards: So is everyone else, admittedly, but humans are by far the most successful at it.

* InterserviceRivalry: A common occurrence among many of SLA Industries' divisions.

* MoralDissonance: Operatives - the group to which the Player Characters belong - are generally depicted as arrogant bullies or worse.

* SerialKiller: And how! This may be the only RPG where the phrase "serial killer epidemic" could be (and was) used with a straight face.

* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill : several applicants, among them Slayer and Bitterness (obviously), Sigmartyr, Trasher, Halloween Jack, Intruder and the Kilneck...
* TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow: '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.