"Be the worst version of yourself"

SYSTEM: ICONS

Have an urge to do a game with someone granting powers that create villains. The concept I think I'll go with is a villain who can turn people (and areas) into the worst versions of themselves...the nice guy succumbs to those internal urges to take the things that don't belong to him, the tidy woman turns out to be tidy and punctual only to keep herself from being wild and violent and explosive, the town that becomes the dark and broken cesspit or ghetto that it looks to the outsider.

Even though ICONS has a power that grants powers, I don't think I'd design the big bad with that in mind; instead, the big bad would be defined with qualities. The other people get changed just because they get changed, rather than worrying about a particular power.

The adventure structure would be something like...

1. Riot in a small area. This is probably where the access to the big bad actually is, or contains a clue to his location, if they go back to look at it.
2. Interlude while we figure out who these people are, and what happened to them. These people probably don't have superpowers. The players figure out what's going on, and there is some indication that the bad guy grows in power through the events in the first scene. The players end by finding evidence that the bad guy has gotten to some other place that he finds a bunch of people who can be really converted... The question is where?
   • Yes, a local asylum is the first thing that popped into my mind, but I don't actually want to do an adventure that stigmatizes people with mental problems.
   • In the same sense, picking some place like a church feels like it's making fun of the religious, and I don't actually want to do that.
   • Business people might be fair game. A convention of some kind?
3. So we're at the convention, and we face the powered-up people in the worst version of the building. The thing is, there's a nearly endless supply of people who can be converted, so even winning here doesn't really solve the problem.
4. Which is why the confrontation that matters is against the big bad, trying to outwit him.