I love your concern that your executioner might be disappointed if you expire too quickly.
It's all a question of what we want for each other
Look at the description from Zeyphyros above, the example of nailing between the forearm-bones, and sideways through the heels, is probably the most painful to imagine.
With this, I would be in practice, dead the moment it is done, and the remaining time is mostly a matter, of waiting (and hoping) for my heart to catch up to the reality and stop beating...
However I don't feel there will be much opportunity for dramatic movement and interesting games.
Any attempt to create force to lift myself up , whether pushing with feet or pulling with arms, will cause such horrible pain that it stops quickly.
Now imagine a different methodology.
You bring me to the place of pain, and there are already some victims crucified there (I see my fate).
Some only bound with rope, some with nails.
To make room for me on a cross, you cut free one of the bound victims.
She is wrecked, exhausted but she lives. You say, "she has had her part, back to the slave-barrack with her". (
Now you have created in my mind the imagination that perhaps I could survive, and you can manipulate that). Perhaps you order me to take part in this, so I experience very closely her condition.
You tie me to the cross, doing it so that I can use as much force to pull myself up and any direction. Just after that, you hammer nails through the feet of a victim beside me, who was also bound with ropes
(Now you have created in my mind the question, What to do to avoid this fate?).
Whatever it is - I fail, and in the next procedure my feet are nailed to the wood. But also, you draw the nails out of the previous victim, take her from the cross and let her collapse to the ground there, and proclaim to the crowd, "I have no use for this anymore, but if any of you want to do something with her, she is yours for a copper coin", and perhaps someone comes forward, who is too poor to purchase a slave on the normal market, but takes this gamble - she lives: he has a beautifuls slave (who perhaps cannot walk too well, but there are enough chores and services she can provide still....); she dies: only copper lost.
So even in this moment you maintain in me, the illusion of hope...
In the final step of the procedure, if you so wish, you can nail the hands/wrists, remove the ropes, and let the howls of hopelessness entertain your ear... you can add to torment, by letting unanswered the question -
why were others released, but not me?
It can be just as much about playing with the mind as the body, so it may be preferrabel to not do everything all at once, all the hardest way.
Give some room for ambiguity...
Let hopes grow high enough that they are worth crushing, and you may have a better spectacle...