Dread without the Jenga
I recently ran a Dread (technically a Dread variant--I used my Heroic Dread rules) game where I experimented with using a deck of cards to replace the tower.
Here's how it worked: I took a deck of cards, and separated out the Ace of Spades. I shuffled the rest of the deck. I took roughly the top half (deliberately not a perfect half), and I put it aside. I then took the next roughly quarter of the whole deck, and I shuffled the Ace of Spades into it. I then reassembled the deck, putting the last untouched quarter on the bottom, the quarter with the Ace of Spades in it in the middle, and the half on top. So the Ace of Spades was roughly between cards 27 and 39, but could be a little higher or a little lower.
Every time someone pulled, they drew a card from the top of the deck. If it was the Ace of Spades, the tower falls. If it was any other Ace, they had to pick a number between 4 and 13; we would then take 3 cards out of the deck, spaced at that interval (so if the first card was the Ace of Hearts and the player picked the number 4, we would remove the 5th, 9th, and 13th cards as well as the 1st card). All of those cards are revealed as well--if any of them are the Ace of Spades, then the tower falls. If necessary, we would wrap around to the beginning to draw enough cards (so if someone draws an Ace and chooses 13, there would always be 3 bonus cards drawn). Drawing an Ace on an Ace would cause a cascade--in theory, you could draw 10 cards on a single draw, if you drew an ace, with an ace in its three cards, and then an ace in its three cards. The deck is kept neat, the discard pile messy (so the discard pile can't be easily used to judge where in the deck you are).
Overall, it worked quite effectively. Like with the tower, the dynamic feels somewhat random, but not perfectly random. There's risk even on the first pull, but the risk is low (but increasing) until you get about 25 pulls. At that point, every pull feels dangerous. 2 of my 3 players expressed a strong opinion that it was better than Jenga Dread; the 3rd viewed both as equivalently good.
Potential advantages over the tower:
1. It's much, much faster. A pull in a conventional Dread game takes time--sometimes a lot of time. A draw of a card is over in an instant. That meant more time role-playing, less time Jenga playing.
2. Minimizes player skill effects--an expert Jenga player has a big advantage over an inexpert one. With card Dread, an expert player has only a small advantage over an inexpert one in playing the tower. (Of course, skill in e.g. decisions about when to pull still makes a big difference.)
2a. Some of the players I've run Dread for (mostly older players) have had extremely shaky hands, such that they felt they couldn't really pull. We solved this by letting them delegate their pulls. But in card Dread, they can just pull.
3. Can be played over the internet. Since there's no skill in the physical act of pulling, a GM with a web cam can keep the deck and simply pull when the players tell the GM to.
4. If small children or pets are around, they won't knock down the tower by accident or the like. Similarly, bumping the table is not nearly as destructive.
5. Some players may find it less intrusive--less disruptive of the immersion of the game.
Potential disadvantages:
1. Some players find that the delays while pulling a block are productive--that they build tension. A fast play mechanic may reduce the tension.
2. Minimizing issues with bumping the table, etc., may have the negative effect of losing the "tower keeps us focused and nervous" dynamic. A deck of cards isn't a loaded gun in the way that a Jenga tower is.
3. Some players really like the specifically Jenga aspects, either because they like playing Jenga, or because they like some of the strategic aspects (I can pull to make it easier for later players or I can pull to make it harder), or because they like the tactile feedback you get when you test a piece in a Jenga tower.
Anyway, I'm going to try this variant more in the future. I'd be very interested to hear about people's opinions if anyone else tries it.