The Dated Doc D

[Vondy]

The last of the real Nazi fugitives are in their 90's and dying off. Indeed, while Nazis make colorful pulp-era villains, they have become the villains of our grandparent's generation. They don't fit into contemporary stories without some very hackneyed explanations. Nazis from space, Nazis in the Bermuda Triangle, Nazis under the Antarctic ice shelf... and so on. But real Nazis or former Nazis? They are basically gone from the Earth.

 

This brings me to Doc D. His background - former Nazi scientist bent on world domination - made sense in the early 1980's. But we're thirty years on from his creation and Doc D should be dead any day now. This is compounded in Day of the Destroyer where, canonically, he can't make use of life-extending technologies due to a genetic quirk.

 

Albrecht is in his 90's. Even a hale 90 year old is fragile and spends half their time napping. Destroyer dozing off mid-plan seems more likely than a burst of youthful energy to conquer the world anew. His background - the Nazi past - is dating him. It seems to me there are a few ways to handle this:

 

--Ignore his birthday. Not very satisfying, but there it is.

--Edit out his inability to use life-extending tech.

--Brain-switching tech! Destroyer in a younger body.

--Tabloid headline: Destroyer's brain alive inside a jar!

 

Or... Bah! His time has passed into the misty cliches of history - move on!

 

--Destroyer dies, but his AI covers it up or someone new dons the mantle.

--Destroyer dies, his organization splinters into fueding factions.

--Destroyer dies, his organization implodes and is picked a part by the circling sharks.

--Destroyer dies, other mega-villains fill the void.

 

How are you dealing with aging villains or heroes whose backstory gives them a dated feel. Yes, comics ignore aging all the time. That's fine with me, but what do you do about specific background elements tied to eras that are too long past to easily hand-wave or ignore?

[Matt Holck]

Building an "uber race" is a splicing issue these days

[Vondy]

I'm not really interested in "uber races." I'm interested in how people are relating to Doctor Destroyer's backstory in an era where the last of the Nazis are passing from the Earth. Are they ignoring it, updating him, moving on, or what?

 

[Matt Holck]

that's just it

 

Dr D has had decades to create generations of super humans

[Vondy]

Wow. One more time! I don't care about the super-humans Doc D has or hasn't created. They aren't relevant to the question at hand. I care about him. The man, the myth, the historical anachronism. The ego-maniacal cult of personality that single-handedly holds his whole organization together (like Qaddafi in Libya once did). What are people doing about the now 90-something supervillain with an increasingly cliched, hackneyed, and out-of-date backstory? The guy should die of old age any day now.

[assault]

"More machine than man".

 

Basically, I would have him gradually becoming a Brain in a Jar, or rather robot. Of course, ultimately even his brain would deteriorate, but that can be ignored for another couple of decades, and then explained away by further technological advances.

 

I don't really use him anyway. He's too powerful for most sane games, even as a megavillain.

[Vondy]

"More machine than man".

 

Basically, I would have him gradually becoming a Brain in a Jar, or rather robot. Of course, ultimately even his brain would deteriorate, but that can be ignored for another couple of decades, and then explained away by further technological advances.

 

I don't really use him anyway. He's too powerful for most sane games, even as a megavillain.

 

I've re-written him to fit the game I run, which is more "down to earth" than a lot of superhero games. You're solution is certainly possible.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

There are a lot of powerful and intelligent superhumans even in the Champions universe. Despite the "writer's fiat' that seems to suggest Destroyer is unbeatable, that is far from the case. Other powerful and/or intelligent villains are certainly capable of causing his downfall.

[BTolputt]

Whilst I haven't played in the Champions Universe much, I'm running a game with my children that works better with the "corny tropes" prevalent in the material. With that said, my kids only know of Nazis as "the bad guys from the Capt America movie". My eldest is dealing with them (briefly) in high school history, but none of them know the true nature of the atrocity that made Nazis the "go to bad guy organisation" that makes up Dr D's history.

 

For them, I'd probably mix up his history a little but for others & the CU in general, I'd see it as an opportunity to move the world on in general. Dr D is aware of his impending demise, knows that even if he should take over the world - he's not going to rule it for long as he is, and (as a fan of the whole genetic purity thing) wouldn't consider someone other than his direct progeny worthy of the throne.

 

There is a good campaign waiting adventure there with multiple clones/children of a Dr D theme trying to prove themselves, another worldwide threat needing to be taken on, and the one candidate that steps up to help his/her old man save the world being the new bearer of the mantle Destroyer. Hell, you can even steal cheesy lines from movies with the heroes coming on the dying Dr D having made his last sacrifice for the world he deemed his to rule looking up into the sky to see a new Dr D taking on the enemy whispering "Though this may be the death of my body, my will is done regardless"​.

 

Later adventures can be had using stories like the new Dr D having to crush opposition to their rule both inside & outside the ranks of the Destroyer organisation, having one of the other candidates begging the Champions for asylum, and even having the new Dr D going through an identity crisis as they find the soul of the old guy coming back to take back what his is... by possessing the new Dr D whenever he wears the armour the old man died in

[Hermit]

I believe a hollywood saying, as selfish as it is, goes something like this "If Nazis did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them." Even now, I'm not sure they're out of the world psyche as the 'epitome' of Easy to Identify evil. Not yet. IF one wants to keep him around, then yeah, more machine than man works. Or Maybe the Doc ages at half the rate due to cyrogenic sleep sessions? So he's not ancient, yet, but he is still getting old enough to worry about his future.

 

I really didn't care for "Shadow Destroyer" attempt to update him. It just didn't quite work.

But I can see why they tried

 

If I were going to update him entirely minus the 'I was an evil nazi scientist gig?' I'd need to think on that.

[Michael Hopcroft]

There are a lot of powerful and intelligent superhumans even in the Champions universe. Despite the "writer's fiat' that seems to suggest Destroyer is unbeatable' date=' that is far from the case. Other powerful and/or intelligent villains are certainly capable of causing his downfall.[/quote']

 

Or, for that matter, PCs who have in the past stopped him (usually by the skin of their teeth) from conquering or destroying the planet or annihilating most of the human race.

 

The more interesting question for me (since I wouldn't use him anyway in a game where I wasn't sure the PCs could find a way to prevent him from at the very least slaughtering the lot) is whether there are times when you need to violate the superhero comics trope and let a dead villain (or hero for that matter) stay dead. Generally speaking a campaign might not be long enough for this to become an issue, and reusing all the same villains and stories in every adventure is lazy gamemastering anyway (unless the players want a GI Joe-like campaign in which every adventure is a battle against a single, amazingly persistent foe.) Ideally you want to have room to tell some different types of stories, which means letting some things simply go away once they have outlived their usefulness. Sometimes the players are most likely to think they've really accomplished something if you let them know, in no uncertain terms, that the threat of a villain like Dr Destroyer has indeed been defeated forever, that he's dead and not coming back, that the evil he represents has finally been laid to rest.

 

Of course, then you have to hold yourself to it and resist the temptation to violate the trust of your players by re-inserting him anyway.

[Greywind]

I've never used Dr. Destroyer. Never have. Never will.

[Grailknight]

Jump him a generation by making him the son of one of the Nazi scientists. Maybe he was born and raised in South America in the 50's.

 

 

Trap him in his armor 24/7.

 

 

Have him hold a worldwide tournament/scavenger hunt to choose his successor.

[Lawnmower Boy]

that's just it

 

Dr D has had decades to create generations of super humans

I think that's something that you want to stay way away from in any Nazi context. Most any context, really, but Nazis especially. Cf. S. M. Stirling and the whole "Eugenics is wrong. In a sizzling hotly sexily effective way."

[Matt Holck]

Wow. One more time! I don't care about the super-humans Doc D has or hasn't created. They aren't relevant to the question at hand. I care about him. The man' date=' the myth, the historical anachronism. The ego-maniacal cult of personality that single-handedly holds his whole organization together (like Qaddafi in Libya once did). What are people doing about the now 90-something supervillain with an increasingly cliched, hackneyed, and out-of-date backstory? The guy should die of old age any day now.[/quote']

 

well nationalism/fascism isn't dead

 

the american traided egyption army just slaughter and bunch is muslims. Maybe he's involved in that

[death tribble]

I had never really thought about it but congrats Vondy this is a really good topic and does give us pause for thought. Aside from Dr Destroyer you could easily make the claim that Communist Russian villains are also going to go the same way. Castro will be gone before too long and then what happens to Cuba ? All these things have knock on effects to both hero and villain organisations.

As for the good doctor I would have his organisation slowly go to pieces as he is dead (or is he ?) and the fact is covered up by loyal lieutenants and die hard fanatics. However without his steering hand at the helm fractures start to appear before the inevitable breakdown. This latter is either due to infighting or the heroes uncovering the truth and making it public.

[DusterBoy]

I had never really thought about it but congrats Vondy this is a really good topic and does give us pause for thought. Aside from Dr Destroyer you could easily make the claim that Communist Russian villains are also going to go the same way. Castro will be gone before too long and then what happens to Cuba ? All these things have knock on effects to both hero and villain organizations.

As for the good doctor I would have his organization slowly go to pieces as he is dead (or is he?) and the fact is covered up by loyal lieutenants and die hard fanatics. However without his steering hand at the helm fractures start to appear before the inevitable breakdown. This latter is either due to infighting or the heroes uncovering the truth and making it public.

 

And one of the things the characters have to deal with is the collateral damage from all the infighting. You could play it as a CU version of all the squabbling that took place between Alexander of Macedon's generals to get his empire for themselves that went on when Alexander died, leaving no heir and no bureaucracy to survive him. (Same thing happened to Attila the Hun's "empire" when he died.)

[Escafarc]

I use part of the backstory from Champions: the New Millennium where the Dr. summoned the Destroyer entity and he was merged with it during WWII and the entity keeps him alive.

[Vondy]

 

well nationalism/fascism isn't dead

 

the american traided egyption army just slaughter and bunch is muslims. Maybe he's involved in that

 

One more time: wow! The existence of fascist or authoritarian gun-toting regimes today has no bearing on the question that was asked. Nor, would doctor destroyer's theoretical involvement with those governments today negate the question. He's a 90 year old ex-Nazi scientist whose backstory is being stretched to incredulity by the march of history. Tony Stark, whose origins were originally in Viet Nam, had to be updated to the War on Terror to pass muster for modern audiences. An ancient hater from WWII whose contemporaries are almost dead to a man doesn't? How does one update him, or do they move on from him - that is the only question being asked.

[Vondy]

@BTolputt

 

I have been increasingly moving towards "move the world on," as you put it. World War Two is no longer a living reality (except for a few ancient hangers on) and the Cold War was yesterday's set of problems. The old Nazis and Commies are bad guys milieu doesn't really fit today. its time for something new. A "Death of the Destroyer" story is brewing in my brain.

[bigdamnhero]

--Brain-switching tech! Destroyer in a younger body.

That's the option I went with in my last CU campaign. Destroyer's body was destroyed in the Battle of Detroit, but his spirit/soul/whatever was trapped in another dimension. (Along with Foxbat's - long story.) 10 years later, an inter-dimensional breach allows his spirit-soul-thingie to return and take over a healthy, new body. Voila! It also allowed me to explore what happens when Dr. D gets a young man's body, how does that change his villainy?

 

It's a great question tho. I've had trouble taking DC's JSA seriously for the last decade, and one of the better decisions DC made with the New 52 reboot IMO was to reboot the JSA and let the Greatest Generation finally retire.

[Lord Liaden]

 

Since Dr. Destroyer's background and history seem to be an issue for this thread, I feel I should clarify a couple of points. First, as per his Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Edition Champions write-ups, Albert Zerstoiten is not and never was a Nazi. As a young scientific genius he served the Third Reich because they had resources he wanted to exploit, and because they gave him no choice. Zerstoiten mouthed Nazi slogans when required, but privately he despised Hitler and his lieutenants as being of limited intelligence, and held their philosophy in contempt for being without scientific basis. Dr. Destroyer today has no interest in or respect for eugenics, the Aryan "master race," or fascist politics or policies. As far as he is concerned there is only one truly superior being on Earth worthy to rule the entire planet: Destroyer.

Second, Dr. Destroyer today is physically far from a typical nonagenerian. It's true that his unique genetics make his otherwise-groundbreaking antigeria treatments unusable by him personally; but his armor contains systems which slow the physical decay of aging considerably. This is why he wears his armor almost constantly nowadays. He retains extraordinary vigor and mental clarity for his years.

Practically speaking, Dr. Destroyer's origins and antiquity have little bearing on how he would be used as a villain today. Like Vandal Savage or Ra's al Ghul these factors are mostly there for flavor, only coming into play if a particular GM wants to use them.

BTW the scourge of Nazism has not, sady, disappeared from the modern world. Besides the various fringe groups which continue to use their name and/or iconography while promoting their philosophy, the underlying racial "ideals" of Nazism have seen a disturbing popular resurgence in the 21st Century, under the guise of various "nationalist" movements across the industrialized West.

 

[assault]

What Lord Liaden said.

 

Doctor D's origin really only matters if you want it to. Of course, that also means that it can be altered relatively easily.

 

Some relatively conservative options: (a) make him the kid, or grandkid, of Nazis, as Grailknight suggested. ( Have him having worked for the "Commies" instead of the Nazis. While the Cold War is a fading memory, it's still within, well, most of our lifetimes, and, of course, its aftermath has produced all kinds of cynical fascist-like weirdos. Both of these options would allow the reuse of much of the existing background text.

 

More radical options are possible too. Doctor Doom has had a couple of interesting revamps in the FF movies and in the Ultimate Fantastic Four series. The first probably doesn't work for Doctor Destroyer, but the latter could provide inspiration for a revamp. Ultimate Doom is definitely more modern in feel than Classic Doom, despite my fondness for the latter.

 

Finally, of course, Doctor Destroyer as he is commonly portrayed isn't particularly tied to a particular hero. That's an inevitable result of him being a character designed for use in more or less any campaign. A revamped version could easily be tied to the details of a particular campaign setting, although at the expense of his (or her, or its) portability.

 

I'd still go with "more man than machine", though. His armour keeps him alive and active. That's the easy and lazy way to do things, and I'm a lazy, if difficult, human being.

[ghost-angel]

Depends entirely on if you want to keep the historical accuracies in place or not.

 

If not, and you just want to use a Doctor Destroyer in a modern campaign then adapt the ideas from his past: he was basically a Nazi Acquisition And Resource, not a Nazi himself. Once their power was broken he moved onto freelance villainy.

 

Today, that means we need a once-global superpower/threat that ruthlessly took scientists against their will and used them as resources, that has fallen and unleashed all those people onto the world - put simply: Doc D was a Russian Communist Scientist (change his name to something more Russian as well); post Communism Collapse, he's been running freelance around the world... (you can't really use the US the same way, though I've no doubt we were the same kind of horrible people during the Cold War, because the US didn't collapse in such a spectacular way.)

 

If you need the history in tact from WW2 onwards, then you really just need to make him a legacy (by bloodline or prodigy, either one), someone continuing the work. Heck, it's a super-tech world, possibly he took on a prodigy and then mind-switched himself into a much younger body, maybe a procedure that required both Mentalla and Menton at once, meaning he can't do it again unless he finds equally powerful mentalists...

[assault]

Doctor D could easily have been East German. No need to Russianise him unless you want to.