Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"
I started my current campaign by telling everyone that it was a typical sunny tuesday morning and for everyone to discribe for me what thier characters were doing. After they all finished, I said that everyones visions fades out for a moment and that you all find your selves in a ornate office at night with a number of well dressed thug types holding guns on you, and it's phase 12. The idea was that someone had broken a magical dohickey that had erased everyones memories of the last week, and they were in the office of the 2nd most powerfull mob boss in the city (The game is set in 1937). They had to fight thier way out, then try to figure out what had happened for the last week that was missing. Got everyone's attention let me tell you.
I later introduced a villian who could "Steal your face", he had shape change, face only, with the added power usable on others, linked. He had to touch someone, and then his face would appear on you, and your face appear on him. I kidnapped a PC and then had the PC replaced with the face-changing villian, and told the player that he was now running the villian and to lead the players into a death-trap. He did a good job, and would have killed a pc, if he hadn't rolled a 1 on a KA for body (ah the fickle dice).
A long time ago I ran a Call of Cthulhu game in which one character died in a remote location. Next week when the player came in early to roll up a new character I told him that his character stumbles into the hotel people were staying at, alive with no memory of what had occured. The PC's never figured out what that was all about before the campaign died, so that was one really good plot idea lost.