For the record: in Separation Anxiety (which turned out to be one of the top 5 Dread games I've run), Epidiah accidentally knocked over the tower 1 1/2 hours into the game. Booyah!
The game was a success, with the group accidentally destroying half of humanity after a very unexpected TPK. I used a "confessional", as in a reality show, where once per scene a player could confess secrets to the "audience" in exchange for avoiding a future pull.
Eppy, I'm curious about how the mechanics of how I ran the game (how often people pulled, why they pulled) compared to your own style. Any thoughts?
First off, I loved the confessional mechanic, and I regret I didn't use it approximately 1 1/2 hours into the game.
I think your pacing was dead on. There's something in particular that happened with that game which I've seen in a few other games that I've been thinking about, and it seems to be a great way to set up a Dread scenario. I don't want to hit any spoilers, so I'll talk about it in abstract. It's the game within the game.
When the tower is young and fresh at the beginning of a game, you want the players to pull with abandon. But just throwing things at them can get tedious. What you want to do is to tempt them into making the pulls. Put little, irresistible bits of story goodness in front of them. What better way to do this than to start your game off with a game.
There was this Pendragon mod for Dread on the Internet that has since seemed to have disappeared. Which is a great sorrow, because it sounded amazing. The part of it I want to highlight is how it began: with a jousting tournament in which all the knights could earn glory and respect by pulling blocks.
So the players, reveling in the stable tower, pull with relish, out doing each other and competing for . . . well for whatever, really. And then when that tower gets just tight enough (or when some shaky-handed game designer knocks it down) the story takes a turn for the dark.
It's not only a lovely way to unsettle a tower, but the palpable change in tone in both the mechanics and the story is so delectable.
I felt your scenario and the way you ran it hit that nail directly on the head.
(And by-the-by, anyone who hasn't played in a Dread game hosted by Piratecat hasn't played Dread.)