[quote=@Shohmyoh]I agree that it would be a precarious balancing act to keep things tense without scaring off too many potential players.  I did have the idea of introducing 'lesser trials' that would not result in character death.  The idea was that players would not always know whether or not a trial will result in character death, and hopefully this would both lengthen the amount of time that players get to remain in the RP and encourage them to take care in how their character attempts to help or trick other characters.  I would imagine that if 'A' betrays 'B' in an effort to save himself only to find out that the trial didn't cause 'B' to die that it could create problems for him in the future.  Thought it might add a layer of strategy and encourage caution in how characters and players interact. 

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If a player drops out in the middle of the RP, the only course of action I've thought of so far would be to write them out and (hopefully) replace them with another willing player.[/quote]

My instinct would be to reduce the size of the group dramatically, and have not every trial result in a character death.

What this means is that you have fewer players to try to keep tabs on, and you can manipulate the game to kill players off at a gentler pace, guaranteeing that they get some bang for their buck. Of course, if somebody does drop out, then that's going to be a bigger hurdle to overcome, but I think you would struggle to persuade another player to take over the same character, especially if much of the game has been about metagame strategy and subtle interactions with the GM and/or other players.