Hi folks, and welcome to the Finder’s Archives. This time around I’m going to take a look into one of my absolute all-time favorite games: SLA Industries. (Pronounced SLAY Industries)
SLA Industries was released originally in 1993, and I first played it in 1997, and the dark feel of this setting has never left me. It is bleak, oppressive, and so, so, menacing if done right. But at the same time, it is so utterly absurd that it feels real.
I’m going to mostly skip over the mechanics here because quite frankly, they’re not great. They’re not bad, but they’re not great either. Almost everything is done via formulas, with only the occasional dice roll (handled on 2d10+modifier – hit a target difficulty), but it does the trick. And the way it is built makes guns extremely deadly. (Which incidentally will lead me to a point later on – where the designers have, to some degree at least, managed to curtail PC gunslingers with a simple trick).
It should also be noted that in some places, the editing absolutely sucks. A hilarious typo means that the Department for “Stocks, Shares, and Bonds” becomes “Shocks, Shares, and Bonds.” Which is, ironically, extremely appropriate for the game itself.
Setting:
The year is 903 SD (SLA Date), and the known universe has been conquered by SLA Industries. Only pocket resistances in the form of various Soft Companies remain, or so SLA would have you believe. As a player, you take the role of a SLA Operative (or Slop), and you are the troubleshooter of the company, but you’re not sent out to war, that’s not what you’re for.
Your role is on Mort (both a planet and a City – think a mix between Coruscant and Los Angeles in Blade Runner), where you fight gangs, soft companies, disloyal employees, brutal Carrien, and more – while on camera. You’re, in effect, a mixture between a Wrestler, the film The Running Man, and a professional assassin. And this role is important because you’re the company’s most effective tool for one single purpose: Keeping the populace distracted. More than 90% of them are unemployed, and they spend their lives glued to the TV. EVERY home has a TV, even if they have nothing else, a TV that cannot be turned off, though it CAN be turned down.
SLA Industries owns EVERYTHING. Everything you see belongs to the company. SLA Industries is eternal, or it says so at least, and nobody disagrees. And absolutely NOBODY crosses the CEO, Mr. Slayer himself.
Your job then is whatever the company assigns you. Missions are delineated by color codes, with things like Blue being maintenance, Red being emergency, and Black being an (unofficial) suicide mission. And you better do the job, since everything you are depends on the goodwill of the company. And if you want to get anywhere in the world, you’ll look good on camera doing it. And looking good on camera means up close and personal, in brutal melee combat – the bloodier the better, so that you can get your 15 seconds of fame (forget 15 minutes, nobody lasts that long on TV in one go). Besides, while guns and melee weapons are cheap, bullets are expensive (see above).
Most of you all are humans or one of the approved “alien” species. Some of you are even created by the company itself, in the form of Stormers, creatures genetically manipulated for specific tasks. The 313 Stormer is the most famous and widely spread, as it is created for brute strength and warfare capabilities. There are others, Wraith Raiders – fast felines from an arctic world, Shaktars – honorable lizard-like creatures from a desert planet, and then there are the 3 Ebon Races: Ebons, Brain Wasters, and the dread Necanthropes. All three are able to access the Ebb, a mystical energy force that allows them to manipulate time and space to various degrees. And while Ebons and Brain Wasters are at totally opposite ends of the spectrum (Ebons generally being gentle beings –well, by SLA standards anyway–and the Brain Wasters being homicidal pyromaniacs), both bow to the Necanthropes, masters of their race. Though none of them want to become one.
Opposing forces include Thresher, a soft company that specializes in the use of Power Suits to try and cause as much physical damage to SLA Industries and kill as many operatives as they can. Dark Knight focuses far more on sedition and are in many ways far more dangerous than Thresher, as they’re far subtler in their work. But there are almost more forces against you than there are allied with you, though with SLA Industries, you start in a rare position of strength.
Outside the city limits, you’ll find even more enemies, in the brutal cannibal sectors, from Carrien, mutants, manchines and Ex-War Criminals. All of whom are bad news, especially the last 2, as they are both extremely tough and extremely heavy armed, far more so than most Slops.
I’m aware that I might not be giving this the full justice that the game deserves, but I do hope it inspires some people to pick up the game. (And if ANYONE ever comes up with a Genesys version, I NEED IT.) One final thing to note, though, is something called The Truth. This was supposed to be the “idea behind the game” where it was all in the head of some madman – and was released in their writer’s bible, so that any writer working on it was able to keep the game and content coherent. HOWEVER, The Truth is whatever you make it, and I personally never liked this particular version of it, and it has since been officially revoked (I believe that was in 2006) and stated that The Truth should be whatever the GM wants it to be.
In short, if you get the chance, and you like dystopian games, I heartily recommend picking this one up.
Kim Frandsen
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