The World of Progress, the universe in which SLA Industries operates, is a science-fiction image of the 1980s, where the fax machine spews out information alongside green-screen computers and vat-grown biogenetic monsters, who compete with humans and exotic alien races for work in an overgrown city that plunges deep underground. Players in SLA Industries take on the role of an Operative, the highly-trained and well-equipped freelancers that serve as the company's agents, investigators, and enforcers.
Operatives perform tasks for both a pay packet and the promise of an increase in their security clearance, as both provide them access to an increased standard of living, better equipment, progression up the corporate ladder and sponsorship opportunities. Most of all though, they strive for the one thing that everyone in the media-driven World of Progress wants: Notoriety. SLA Industries (pronounced "Slay Industries") is an award-winning pen-and-paper role-playing game that was first published in Scotland in 1993. The game is a horror noir science-fiction setting set in a dystopian reality in which the majority of the known universe is either owned or indirectly controlled by the eponymous corporation SLA Industries. The game incorporates themes from the cyberpunk, gothic horror and conspiracy genres, and has always been praised on the quality of writing and art.