Alicornutopia

I'd need a mechanism by which to restrict the powers to badly-behaving people or by which the powers would cause bad behavior.

And once you have a thing in a universe with "Tends To Behave Badly" as one of its effects, the temptation to hand some to a Joker and have them Tend Not To Behave Badly is nigh irresistible.

Brainstorming:

- Gaining or using the powers requires unethical activities, as with the Endarkened (but without the 'hurt yourself instead of a third party' option or counterbalancing magic of other sorts, and for this to work as intended the unethical activity can't be causing pain or the setting can't have a Joker)

- Using the powers causes or requires an antisocial state of mind, as with The Hulk

- The powers are gained and/or maintained through technological means which are controlled by an antisocial organization, as with Centipede's exploding guys in the MCU

I read a series where the act of using your powers makes you evil. So humans are fine, superpowered people who don't use their powers are fine, and the rest of the superpowered people are enormous assholes xD And since this is not really well known, most superpowered people use their powers (often with perfectly good intentions) and wind up becoming insane despotic tyrants, and everyone else just assumes Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely and tries not to die.

I'm not sure it could carry a setting all on its own, but it occurs to me that Inception would make a very interesting component of an Effulgence setting, at least. I'm getting this mental image of the local Bell teaching herself to be an Extractor so that she can set up decent mental defenses without needing to let anyone else into her head. Also, possibly, using her own dreams as some sort of introspective sandbox, since it seems like that would be a thing that would be possible given Inception's dream-mechanics.

Mister Tulip wrote:I'm not sure it could carry a setting all on its own, but it occurs to me that Inception would make a very interesting component of an Effulgence setting, at least. I'm getting this mental image of the local Bell teaching herself to be an Extractor so that she can set up decent mental defenses without needing to let anyone else into her head. Also, possibly, using her own dreams as some sort of introspective sandbox, since it seems like that would be a thing that would be possible given Inception's dream-mechanics.

Okay, get out of my head, because I was just thinking about it.

About the power corrupts: Maybe using powers cause very specific brain damage or neurochemical transformations that lead the person to become "evil"?

Also, the time dilation in Inception is fantastic for getting time to think.

In a setting where dreamcraft is widely known, I imagine napping at one's desk during tests would be much less discouraged.

...Much less discouraged? Wouldn't it be, like, considered cheating?

Oh, maybe. It could go either way I guess. Certainly it doesn't imply slacking.

A Bell like that would probably face Sarion levels of nervous breakdown unless she quickly managed to set up defenses.