The Roll of Tape is a titanic, efficient nation, ruled by The Card Machine with an iron fist, and remarkable for its rum-swilling pirates, deadly medical pandemics, and frequent executions. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical population of 10.542 billion Tapeians enjoy great individual freedoms in everything except elections, which, where they exist at all, are populist shams for a dictatorship government that has no intention of ever giving up power.

The tiny, corrupt, pro-business government is primarily concerned with Industry, with Healthcare and Administration also on the agenda, while Environment and Law & Order aren't funded at all. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Aloria. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 7.5%.

The frighteningly efficient Tapeian economy, worth a remarkable 1,999 trillion Cards a year, is broadly diversified and led by the Retail industry, with major contributions from Arms Manufacturing, Gambling, and Soda Sales. Black market activity is frequent. Average income is an impressive 189,696 Cards, but there is a significant disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 575,106 per year while the poor average 48,656, a ratio of 11.8 to 1.

The native owl population is in permanent hibernation, old folks yearn for the days when young people saw bloodthirsty death matches with their own eyes instead of through a screen, there's a lot of hot air coming from the Capitol Building, and comic books avoid plot inconsistencies by removing the plot. Crime, especially youth-related, is all-pervasive, perhaps because of the country's complete lack of prisons. Tape's national animal is the Sticky Snakes, which is also the nation's favorite main course, and its national religion is Violetism.

Tape is ranked 21,663^rd in the world and 186^th in The North Pacific for Largest Black Market, with 140 trillion Standard Monetary Units.