How do you make a deadly dungeon more interesting for paranoid players?

[SangoProduction]

So, I was running Tomb of Horrors a couple days ago. They got past all of the traps, and then found an orb of annihilation door thing, and from then on, they were hyper cautious...as they probably should be. But they got through 1 and a half hallways within 4 hours. Even the guy who requested the adventure be a dungeon crawl had checked out, and basically not talked the entire time.

Should I add some more wandering monster encounters to try and spice things up and interrupt the back and forth testing of traps and things?

[Seto]

Put standard procedures into place. For example, ask your players how they search floors/ceilings, how they test doors for traps... That way you can just assume by default that the characters are doing that, unless specified otherwise, and tell them if their tests reveal something. They can always tell you if they want to try a different approach on a specific door/room.

That should at least cut down on repetitiveness. Maybe not on paranoia when confronted with something new.

[SaintNick]

Talk with your players and state that you will assume they are competent so that you can skip over the tedious searching to keep the game moving. Instead, focus on the encounters of interest by providing private messages or notes to players informing them what their character perceives. It is usually good to split the required information up between the players so they only gain the complete picture when everyone participates. Overlapping what information each player learns is also useful to provide some redundancy. Here are a few examples:
"Upon entering the room, your eyes are draw to some strange markings on the wall"
"Your instincts tell you that magic has been used in this room recently"
"A stench of burnt flesh catches your attention as you draw closer to the room"

The main goal is to keep a dialogue going between as many people as possible so everyone remains engaged. Since perception rolls should be rolled by the GM in private, you have some flexibility in how much or how little to reveal. Though personally I like to always provide at least some hint so the players always have some amount of agency with regard to the outcome. "Rocks fall everyone dies" is off-putting no matter how poorly the party rolls.

[icefractal]

The problem is that Tomb of Horrors is sort of built on the "I didn't say simon says!" type of 'challenge'. As in, most of the traps don't have anything further to do once you notice them, so the point is whether you remembered to say that you were checking the door knob with gloves on. It probably works better in it's original format - a tournament module with a time limit - but I wouldn't use it in a home game.

[Nifft]

Some sort of competition is racing against the party, and whoever gets to the bottom first gets eaten by a lich the prize.

Occasionally they'll see (part of) a dead body, when you want to warn them about a particular trap.

Occasionally they'll see live rivals behind them, advancing rapidly...

[tiercel]

Even the guy who requested the adventure be a dungeon crawl had checked out, and basically not talked the entire time.

Might be worth checking what the guy looking for “a dungeon crawl” (as well as your other players) were looking for, because if they wanted to kick in the door, smite some orcs, fireball would-be Tucker’s Kobolds, slay the dragon, save the elven artist-formerly-known-as-Prince, loot the treasure chamber, and go up a level, then Tomb of Horrors pretty much self identifies as not being the right module — it’s designed to be a paranoia-fest, and you might do better just switching to a different module more engaging for your group.

[aglondier]

Add corpses as dungeon scenery, using the nearby traps in the most creative manner possible to have killed them. Gives the players a hint as to the traps, and makes them really wonder how the npcs managed to off themselves like that.

"He bled out from his foot being severed."
"But the scythe trap is at head height...?"

[Asmotherion]

IDK, personally I think the Paranoia is part of the excitement.

Perhaps add some cinematics, or put hints here and there for traps they may encounter. Blood stains, sounds of clicking mechanisms, chains moving all being apparent with a relatively low DC. Basically, around 70% of the traps should have a "heads up, we need to check for traps" mechanism.

One of my favorite "traps" as a DM was, after a series of relativelly easy to spot deadly traps, I had a gargoil-like head decorating a haulway. The players took about 2 hours to figure out how to disarm the trap, tried out passwords, tryed summoning something to triger it, nothing. In the end they had the Barbarian try to trigger it, as he was the most probable to survive. When he shouted "clear" my players all turned and questioned me, to which I replied in my favorite Evil DM moment ever "Yeap, just a decoration". Paranoia is an awesome way to enhance game experiance.