the pitch
Team of threeoperatives, plus the Chief and other Cadmus staff as NPCs. Team would already have been formed some time ago off camera, with only now being where we get to see their adventures.
would also need a Cadmus utility journal.
The Pitch
Once upon a time, there were three ordinary people, who endured horrible accidents that left them unable to be a part of conventional society. Filled with despair, one man drew them together with the promise that there could be something more to their lives again. That they could help inspire their fellow man and by overcoming their own challenges and sorrows, become something more. That man was Niles Caulder, the Chief. The Doom Patrol’s members will be freakish, by any definition. None of them, because of their looks or abilities, would have a chance at living a normal life. This job and each other are all they’d have.
What I’d like to do is set up the Doom Patrol as Cadmus field agents, cleaning up messes from Cadmus science projects gone wrong, including DNAliens, various monsters, and other things created by tampering in things man was not meant to know. Human-shaped black hole, creature that “eats” colors, giant telepathic ants, nac mac feegle-style creatures, etc. the weirder and more sci-fi/silver-age crazy the better. They’d also investigate other sci-fi phenomena (to use an old in-game example, they’d be the first ones sent in to deal with the Dark Heart nannites), and battle a new Brotherhood of Evil (with the same old Brain, however)
What the Doom Patrol do not know, is that the accidents and these accidents were the result of Cadmus experiments orchestrated by the Chief (still Niles Caulder). The Chief’s exact relationship to Cadmus and its heads, and whether or not he or they is truly in charge, should be left up to question for some time. What the Doom Patrol will do when it finds this information out, well, that’s up to them. This constitutes part of the “big idea” of the team, one of two long-running arcs with them. The other centers even more directly around Cadmus itself, and a secret project that might well bring doom to us all.
The Doom Patrol maintains only the loosest connections to other teams and super-heroes of the rest of the universe. Borrowing a bit from the Animated universe, Cadmus has a distinct distrust for metahumans, and prefers to use ones they can control. (They have specific fail-safes to deal with each DP member going rogue) The DP may encounter the other heroes from time to time, but aren’t on the phone-tree to call when really big cases start going down. They’re still definitely free to encounter some of the tangential or side bits, but definitely would not need their parts plotted for (and if they would be a good fit, this can be worked out through good communication).
