Until the docotors realized that they could give cancer and AIDS to anyone they hated. Until the governments took those juries and imposed thought police. Until the Rock Stars realized that they were the new messiahs. Things kinda suck now. Especially since Ayn Rand got retroactive immortality and Fred Phelps can, unconciously and unknownst to him, call down bibilical smiting on people he doesn't like.

It's been one year. One year of Fallout Boy's jihad against My Chemical Romance. One year of ignorant creation "scientists" destroying the universe via localized restructuring of the laws of physics. One year when the band Dragonforce conquered the country of England.

You survived. Not perfectly, of course. But you made it through a hell of a lot better than most of the other c-stringers. The lucky few are dying for their gods in a holy Starbucks. The unlucky aren't even human anymore. You escaped that.

A Quick Summary of the Major Changes

• Most monotheist religions no longer exist in any manner we could relate to. Because of the rare few people that developed belief-based reality altering capabilities, the rapture happened 942,072 times to various sects that all claimed to be the "one true faith." Incidentally, the solution to 80 different gods saying "everyone that isn 't on my side goes to hell!" is that everyone goes to hell.
• Not all talents are equal. I had the misfortune to develope the ability to make anything I eat taste like Mountain Dew. It is not volentary.
• Though most people have some limited intuitive understanding of their talents, they do not grant comprehension, and are limited by the lack thereof. Just because you can make fireballs doesn't mean you understand thermodynamics or how you've temporarily altered it. You might be lucky and thus able to do anything you can imagine, but that is surprisingly limited for most people. Oh, by the way, if you see a physicist lighting a cigarette with his mind, do not piss him off.
• Because of terms like information superhighway, world wide web, forum, and chat room, people already conceptualize the internet as space. This has led to literal e-space that has a stargate to evey modem on Earth. Do not visit the independant eNation of 4chan. It holds the distilled mental sickness of nearly 7 billion superhuman beings. The metaphysics alone make Rebecca Sean Borgstrom's eyes bleed.
• Relatedly, your entire country now lurves mudkipz.
  

Point totals should vary for each character from Normal Human (people who can't figure out what their talent is / have really useless talents like "everything is mountain dew") to Powerful Superhuman, for those guys that would be considered A-list, if powers were not randomly generated amongst 6.5 billion people, ensuing ridiculously IRL munchkins.

Me and my friends used d6 to randomize each character's point total, (1-2 being normal, 3-4 being exceptional, and 5-6 being powerful) but that's not really required for the setting to work. You could set it at a higher level, I suppose, but that's more Nobilis, as contrasted with The Big Lewbowski of B and C-Listers in a world of crazy godmen. Not that that's bad, but it's not what I'm interested in writing.

Oh, side note, balance is something this setting is violently opposed to. Anyone that objects to SMA is liable to spontaneously combust. You have been warned.


The Fredomocracy of Blazing Steel Freedom

The Freedomocracy of Blazing Steel Freedom is a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe comprising the Burning Fields, the Valley of the Damned and a number of smaller islands. It is technically ruled over by Prime King-ister ZP "Zippy" Theart, though this is just because the default assumption of everyone is that the lead singer is the Front and DragonForce, like most other bands, didn't think it was worth the trouble say anything about it.

The population of the Freedomocracy is fairly large, population wise, being the 22nd largest population in the world, even though there were... casualties in the initial anarchy following the initial empowerment. Before we go further, there is something I have to address. Perhaps it's not true of rpgnet, but the average player I talked with seemed to think that, what with everyone being a talent, more talents = larger superpower. It is true that, all things being random, it is more likely for a country with a larger set of trails to generate better results. However, it is also true that, given that these talents are random, with no requirement of being benevolent, larger countries tend to have their hands full with newborn children that make everyone in a 9 mile radius compulsively river-dance to death. With that out of the way, back to the rest of the article.

Domestically, the country is technically democratic, though the fact that they have a hypercommand on national television makes Walter Lippmann turn over in his grave. The priorities of the government can be handily summarized by watching he movie 300 and then reading the Exalted Corebook. [more later, if I ever get around to it]

Talents should, by the virtue of perfect randomization, be evenly distributed, but there's always that string of five heads in a row if you flip enough coins. The Freedomocracy tends moderately toward flashy utility powers, like a man that drive a red cars (but only red cars) without gas or the woman that can read any language, as long as it's written sideways with a #2 pencil. And no, turning the page sideways doesn't work. Talents, as you may have noticed, are somewhat arbitrary.

This might be a good time to mention that there is a small chunk of the population whose talents are so esoteric that they haven't figured them out yet. (At least they're luckier than that paraplegic that developed hyperbody. That's just insult to injury.)

The foreign policy of the Freedomocracy is interventionist, to put it lightly. Fortunately, for the citizens at least, they haven't really had time to stage any sort of invasion, beyond that whole Monsterica-BSF thing that's been going on for two months since Mr. Lordi called DragonForce "posers". The war has involved staggering casualties on both sides, but there's been no complaints from the international community because A) It serves as a chance to learn the new rules of Talent wars without, y'know, actually going through the trial and error of fighting one, and B) Because it is fucking awesome.


Source: RPGNet