What if Nessie controlled the world?

[SWBaxter]

The logical way to go from here is to give sinister conspiracy-style origins to other famous monsters. Hmm...

Other monsters/weird critters/etc.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cryptids

The various other lake monsters could also be aboleths. Maybe the humanoid critters (Sasquatch and cousins) are actually sitings of grimlocks, and that means mind flayers can't be far behind. Maybe there's a secret war between the aboleths and the illithids. Or more likely, both are fractious and try to get the better of each other as well as the enemy. So Nessie sometimes helps the mind flayer faction located in faraway British Columbia (whose servants are the source of many Sasquatch sitings), because that hampers her rival, Ogopogo (lake monster of Lake Okanagan).

Another angle is to look for connections between famous people and places. Interestingly enough, the first person that popped into my mind when I was thinking about a British Columbia - Scotland connection was Sir Sandford Fleming, a Canadian engineer who built much of the Canadian Pacific Railway and invented universal standard time, the system of time zones we use today. I thought of him because I knew he was born in Scotland; on looking up his bio in Wikipedia, it gets even better, he was born in the same town as Adam Smith. So maybe the whole Canadian Pacific Railway was actually a cover for depositing one of Nessie's offspring in Lake Okanagan... and then that raises the question: what nefarious purpose is served by time zones?

 

[SWBaxter]

So I looked up Kirkcaldy in Fife on Wikipedia; that's the town where both Adam Smith and Sandford Fleming were born. It turns out it's a little ways from Loch Ness (about a third of the way across the country), but no need to worry about that. Other relatively famous people from Kirkcaldy:

Robert Adam (architect), a contemporary of Smith's
Sir David Steel (politician), now retired
Gordon Brown (current chancellor of the exchequer) - roughly the equivalent of the Secretary of the Treasury in the US
Jocky Wilson (two time world darts champion)
Guy Berryman (Coldplay bassist)

I think it's clear what sort of havoc Nessie could wreak with these people under her control. Well, no it's not really, but I'm sure a sufficiently twisted conspiracy can come up with something.

 

[Eltern]

I'm thinking of starting a d20 Modern game, and I must say this would be amazing Unfortunately I was going to make it post- WWII, and the more influential contemporary people from Kirkcaldy aren't the right age. I could, of course, go into surrounding towns...

 

[SWBaxter]

I'm thinking of starting a d20 Modern game, and I must say this would be amazing Unfortunately I was going to make it post- WWII, and the more influential contemporary people from Kirkcaldy aren't the right age. I could, of course, go into surrounding towns...

Well, the main rule of building a conspiracy theory is to fit data to the desired result. If the Kirkcaldy angle doesn't work for you, then you can go back to another track, such as Adam Smith and those influenced by him. A later economic theorist who was influenced by (and often at odds with) the work of Adam Smith was Karl Marx. What if they were both representatives of shadowy conspiracies in conflict with each other over control of the world's economy, and World War II was actually caused by their scheming and rivalry? The history of Russia in the 20th century is ripe for conspiracy theories, what with Tunguska, Rasputin, the Russian Revolution and civil wars, Lenin and Stalin with their reigns of terror, etc.

Two of the economic giants of the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman, nicely bracket WWII. They'd have to fit into the conspiracy (or conspiracies) somewhere, particularly since they're competing schools of thought and yet both appear to be strongly adhered to by some governments. Are they actually in competition, or all part of the same grand conspiracy? Only the GM knows for sure (and frankly, the campaign usually plays better if he doesn't make up his mind for a while).

Another angle for post-WWII is the Marshall plan. US Secretary of State George Marshall oversaw the reconstruction of western Europe after WWII, starting in 1948. The catalyst for his plan was a meeting after the war in which he noticed Josef Stalin seemed unconcerned about conditions in Europe - devastated by war, it made fertile ground for communist revolution in many countries, and that motivated Marshall to come up with a way to prevent such an outcome. There's lots of scope for plotting and conspiracies in the early days of the cold war. Ironically enough, Marshall retired after Senator Joseph McCarthy denounced him for making decisions that helped the communist cause. Any self-respecting conspiracy would have its fingerprints all over the Marshal Plan as it rebuilt western Europe's economy (and quite likely also the communization of Eastern Europe on the other side of the iron curtain - global conspiracies like to keep all their bases covered).

 

[The_Universe]

As for other Cryptids fitting well into "Shadowy Controller of Events/People," you should read up on the Mothman (but you can probably safely avoid the movie).

 

[trancejeremy]

That's actually one of my favorite movies. (The Mothman Prophecies. One of the first DVDs I bought. Of course, I also like the book)

Anyway, speaking of movies, this reminds me of "Amazon Women on the Moon", which had a segemtn parodying "In Search Of", asking the question, "Was the Loch Ness Monster Jack the Ripper?" And they had a Loch Ness monster dressed up in Victorian garb flagging down a prostitute...