That's funny! We must be sharing a hive mind or something:
That is I am new to this thread, too, and while I was reading it I was thinking of the same idea as you: that is why not simply replace the Jenga blocks with a 'usage die' from the Black Hack, that we keep downgrading by one step (d20, d12, d10, d8, d6, d4...) whenever we roll a 1 or 2.
But the same as you did, I realized that the problem with that method is that it is too predictable and gradual. There is no danger (not even a remote one) that it might all 'fall' in a single pull or two. So scratch that.
Then I reached your post at the bottom of this thread and I saw that you had already beat me to all of this.
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MANY EDITS LATER:
Sorry for the long spiral of edits here. It is just because I keep having additional thoughts on this:
1) What if the usage die that we are downgrading here step by step (d20, d12, d10, d8, d6, d4...) is combined with a second die roll - e.g. an exploding d6, or some similar mechanic - that sometimes makes that usage die downgrade by more than one step at a time?
2) To simplify that: We could just use the usage die method on its own and downgrade the die on a 1 or 2 the same as we usually would. Except if it is a 1, then we downgrade the die by one step; and if it is a 2, then we downgrade the die by 2 steps.
3) Or if that doesn't feel dangerous enough: then in addition to doing the above, we also roll a small pool of d6's on the side whenever we roll a 1 or a 2 on the usage die: If the lowest result any of those d6's beats the 1 or 2 that we just rolled, then we downgrade the usage die by as many steps as that d6 result.
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MANY TRIAL RUNS LATER:
Besides the problem that Avatar_Izzy found earlier, I have now run into another problem with this idea of substituting a usage die for a Jenga Tower:
On the good side: When combined with any of my additional rules above, it sometimes simulates the tension of pulling blocks out of a Jenga tower fairly well.
But on the bad side: There are also some runs where the usage die becomes stuck at one of its larger die-sizes & it takes an incredibly large number of rolls to get through that step. There is no tension & it is no fun when it becomes stuck like that.
The problem there is that it all just depends on how the usage die itself rolls: So long as that die is involved, then there is always a possibility that on some runs it will just keep beating the odds; that it will just keep rolling & rolling for an absurdly long time before it finally rolls a 1 or a 2.
That could be fixed by combining the usage die with a progress track or etc to keep its number of rolls within bounds.
But I think that would be too cumbersome: Why combine a usage die with a progress track, when we could simply roll against a progress track's value & leave the usage die out of this?
So I'm abandoning this usage die idea for now.
But I'm not deleting my post here. I'm leaving it, just in case any of it is useful to Avatar_Izzy or anybody else.