SLA Industries

SLA Industries is a strong fit for groups that want to play well-armed company Operatives in a horror-noir science-fiction setting, climbing a corporate ladder in front of the cameras while the city around them comes apart. The current line is the 224-page 2nd Edition from Nightfall Games, using the S5S d10 rules, and it supports both one-session Blueprint News jobs and longer campaigns built on security clearance, sponsorships and notoriety.

It is a weaker fit if you want a light cyberpunk evening, a hopeful future, or combat rules that stay in the background. Character creation is still a point-buy process with many small choices, and fights track rate of fire, recoil and armor damage. The tone mixes satire with gore: Operatives feed always-on television with death and dismemberment, and the work includes cannibal sectors, blood cults and things that claw at reality.

What the game is

SLA Industries (pronounced "Slay Industries") is set in the World of Progress, a dystopian universe owned or steered by the corporation of the same name. The focus of play is planet Mort and Mort City, home of Head Office. Players are Operatives: trained freelancers who take company jobs for pay, a higher security clearance, better gear and, above all, notoriety in a media-driven culture.

The game was first published in Scotland in 1993. Dave Allsop and Jared Earle founded Nightfall Games to make it, and Allsop remains the game's art director and a lead designer. The official site describes a science-fiction image of the 1980s, where fax machines and green-screen computers sit beside vat-grown biogenetic creatures, and it places the game in the cyberpunk, biopunk, gothic horror, conspiracy and splatterpunk mix that has defined the line since the beginning.

Publication history and editions

Nightfall's about page says the company and the game began in 1993, and that Wizards of the Coast bought Nightfall Games and SLA Industries that same year. The line later returned to Nightfall as an independent publisher. Jared Earle, a founding member, came back in 2010. Mark Rapson joined in 2018 and, as managing director, ran the 2nd Edition Kickstarter and later development. Benn Graybeaton is credited as the S5S rules developer.

The 2nd Edition Kickstarter ran from September 17 to October 8, 2019 and raised £90,444 from 1,281 backers. A free Quick Start preceded the campaign. The PDF went into the DriveThruRPG catalog on December 31, 2020, and general sale followed in January 2021. The current core PDF was last updated on August 10, 2023. The 2nd Edition book is not a straight reprint: years have passed on Mort, the Neophron have joined the Operative programme, and the rules use the new S5S system rather than the first edition's 2d10 test.

The 2nd Edition core rulebook received a 2021 ENNIE Judges' Spotlight, awarded to judge James Surano for the Nightfall Games book credited to Dave Allsop.

What you need to play

For a full game you need the 224-page full-colour core rulebook, ten-sided dice (the Quick Start expects six per player, with one die a different colour for the Success Die), and a Game Master. The core is sold as a $25 PDF and as a $60 retail book on DriveThruRPG; the printed book includes the PDF. Nightfall also sells physical copies through its own shop, linked from the official game page. Authors of the core are Dave Allsop, Jared Earle, Mark Rapson and Chris 'Shep' Shepperson.

If you want to try the game first, start with the free 2nd Edition Quick Start. It is a 48-page introduction with five pregenerated Operatives and a Blueprint News job to clear Carrien out of the sewers. The itch.io listing still describes it as a beta prepared around the 2019 Kickstarter, so treat it as an on-ramp rather than a complete substitute for the core.

The rest of the line

Nightfall has kept the 2nd Edition line moving after the core. The official range includes the Operative's Handbook (an 80-page player guide with streamlined character generation, training packages, rating spends and equipment), a GM's Pack with a four-panel screen and starter campaign seeds, Hunter Sheets: Data File 1 (twelve ready hunt jobs), and the collected Progress Reports. Threat Analysis 1: Collateral and Threat Analysis 2: Cult expand the opposition, using the line's four-C threat split of Corporate, Conflict, Cult and Collateral. Species Guide 1 covers Shaktars and Wraithen. Species Guide 2: Stormer/Bio-Gen is announced for early 2027 and will go deeper on Karma's biogenetic Stormers.

Those books are useful once a group has the core and a sense of the job loop. None of them is required to run a first session.

Digital tools and VTT support

There is no official virtual tabletop release from Nightfall as of November 12, 2026. A fan-made Foundry VTT system, VacantFanatic/sla-foundry, automates S5S dice, combat math, Flux and movement, and its author describes it as unofficial. Use it if your table already runs Foundry and is comfortable with a community system; do not treat it as publisher support.

Core rules and play structure

S5S is a d10 pool. You roll one Success Die, which should be a different colour, plus a number of Skill Dice equal to the skill rank plus one. Every die, Success Die and Skill Dice alike, adds the relevant stat and skill. If the Success Die meets or beats the target number, the action succeeds. Each Skill Die that also meets the target improves the quality of that success, from a plain result up through better grades of success. If the Success Die fails, the attempt usually fails even when Skill Dice come up well. Published examples put Challenging tasks at 7 and Insane tasks at 16. If four or more Skill Dice still meet the target, some writeups of the system treat that as a minimum success through experience.

The usual session is a company job. Operatives pick up a Blueprint News file, often shortened to BPN, that states the task, the pay and any special requirements. Files are colour-coded by type and importance. Hunter Sheets are a tighter variant: a notice to find and deal with a named target, useful as a one-shot or a side job. Departments across SLA issue the work, and Third Eye News may send a crew to film you. Jobs that arrive with no cameras are worth a second look.

Characters and advancement

Character creation in the core is a multi-step point-buy process: species, stats, a training package, skill points (reviews of the core describe a 30-point spend with ranks that cost different amounts), and traits. The official 2nd Edition pitch names Humans, Ebonites, Shaktars, Wraithen and the newly arrived Neophron among Operative species; Stormers, vat-grown by the Karma department, are also part of the line, with a dedicated species guide scheduled for early 2027. A 2021 review of the core counted nine playable species in the book, including more than one Stormer type. Ebonites are the ones who work the Ebb, treating each discipline as a skill and spending Flux to calculate formulae that can heal, communicate or form weapons.

Advancement is built into the setting. Pay and a higher security clearance open better housing, gear and sponsorships. Ratings Points and notoriety give a mechanical reason to look good on camera. The campaign promise is less a chosen-one arc than a career: stay useful to the company, stay famous, and try not to die on a live broadcast.

Signature mechanics

The Success Die plus Skill Dice split is the core hook: talent and training both matter, but a bad Success Die can still spoil a skilled attempt. Combat is meant to be dangerous. Participants declare actions from lowest initiative to highest, then resolve from highest to lowest. Operatives get a defense against an incoming attack each round without having to spend their action on it. Rate of fire, recoil and damage to armor all have procedures. Hit points are blunt: at zero, the character is dead, with a critical threshold and severe-wound rules on the way down. That lethality matches the splatterpunk framing, including combat drugs and dual wielding for tables that want them.

Ratings Points are the other signature. Being filmed is not just colour. Looking good for Third Eye News can mean endorsements and promotion, which is why a job with no cameras feels different from one that will be on every screen in Downtown.

What play feels like

A typical session starts with a briefing, moves through a dirty job in Mort City or just outside it, and ends with pay, footage and whatever the team learned about the company that issued the file. Early work near Head Office can look almost pedestrian (clear a sewer, quiet a food court, follow a murder spree). As clearance rises, the map opens toward the Deep Construct under the city and the Cannibal Sectors beyond the walls.

The table tone sits between satire and sincerity. SLA is openly monstrous, and the World of Progress is written with a straight face about franchise worlds, media gore and corporate euphemism. Play rewards a squad that can shoot, investigate and keep its public image intact, while remaining suspicious of the department that wrote the file.

Running the game

The Game Master's main prep cost is fluency with Mort, the departments and the threats, not inventing a new mission format every week. BPNs and Hunter Sheets give a clear job wrapper, and the GM's Pack adds seeds for Collateral, Cult, Corporate and Conflict campaigns plus soft-company sponsors. The short running chapter in the core is often praised for that structure. The same reviews note that campaigns and longer conspiracies get less mechanical support than the job format itself, so a GM who wants a hidden chronicle has to build that scaffolding.

A common pitfall is treating the setting glossary as something players must memorize before session one. Teach the job loop first: take a file, do the work, get paid, get seen. Let clearance, sponsorships and departmental rivalries accrue in play.

Campaign fit

The Quick Start and Hunter Sheets support one-shots. The wider line is built for a campaign in which security clearance, notoriety and sponsorships change what jobs you can take and how public your failures become. Replacement Operatives are easy to justify inside a company that already treats staff as expendable footage, though a table that likes long-term sponsorships and clearance will want to keep people alive.

There is no official solo mode. A Game Master is expected.

Reception and awards

As of November 12, 2026, the DriveThruRPG core listing is a gold bestseller with a 4.7 rating from 32 ratings (26 five-star, 4 four-star, 1 three-star, 1 two-star) and 4 written reviews. The 2nd Edition core received a 2021 ENNIE Judges' Spotlight.

Cannibal Halfling Gaming praised the setting, the job structure and the GM-facing material, and said the World of Progress remains one of the most playable dystopias around. The same review argued that character creation still feels overburdened, that the mechanics often resemble a cautious 1990s skill system, and that Ratings Points are one of the places the rules actually catch up to the premise. Groups who already loved first edition tend to welcome the update; new tables should go in for the setting and the job loop, not for a radical rules experiment.

Where it is strongest

• A distinctive corporate-horror setting with a clear job loop: BPNs, Hunter Sheets, media coverage and a ladder of clearance and notoriety.
• Dangerous, detailed combat that matches the splatterpunk tone, with death at zero hit points.
• A living 2nd Edition line: core, Quick Start, player handbook, threat books, species guides and a GM pack.
• A tone that can be satirical without turning the corporation into a joke, and grim without losing the media-career hook.

Where it can frustrate groups

• Character creation and combat both add procedures on top of a fairly simple core roll, which can feel dated or heavy if the table wanted a light cyberpunk night.
• The setting is dense. New Game Masters can get lost in departments, species and history before they run the first file.
• Longer conspiracy play is implied more than it is supported with tools.
• There is no official VTT product, and English-language discovery still leans on DriveThruRPG and Nightfall's own site.

Content and safety notes

This is a high-intensity horror and satire game. Expect graphic violence, dismemberment, cannibalism, cults, body horror, corporate exploitation, surveillance and a media culture that turns death into entertainment. Biogenetic Stormers and combat drugs are part of the line. Agree in advance how much gore, bodily violation and on-camera cruelty the table wants to see, and how you will call a stop if a scene goes too far.

Best starting path

Download the free Quick Start and run the sewer-clearance BPN with the five pregenerated Operatives. If the table wants to continue, get the 2nd Edition core from DriveThruRPG or from Nightfall. Game Masters who want a screen and starter seeds can add the GM's Pack. Players who want more training packages and equipment can add the Operative's Handbook once the basic job loop is familiar.

Research notes

Last checked November 12, 2026 (America/New_York).

• Nightfall Games: SLA Industries official page
• Nightfall Games: About Us
• DriveThruRPG: SLA Industries 2nd Edition (product 340909; API checked November 12, 2026)
• itch.io: SLA Industries 2nd Edition Quick Start
• Kickstarter: SLA Industries 2nd Edition
• 2021 ENNIE Awards nominees and winners
• Cannibal Halfling Gaming: SLA Industries 2E Review
• Reviews from R'lyeh: Quick-Start Saturday, SLA Industries
• Nightfall Games: A Storm Is Brewing (Species Guide 2, October 29)
• Unofficial Foundry VTT system