Traps are a staple of dungeon crawls and I find it a bit disappointing that they don’t occur with greater frequency in 4e dungeons. In most modules, the traps are confined to a single room where the encounter is some diabolical device of destruction.
While I find the quintessential trap room enjoyable, the formula is predictable and players find themselves unwittingly throwing open doors and chests with meta confidence. I cringe whenever the one of the party members cries, “Come on, fellahs. We’ve already dealt with the trap in this dungeon.” I cringe even more when I discover the metagaming bugger is right.
While the lord of the dungeon saw fit to outfit one room with magic crossbow turrets, I find it odd that the same lord did not outfit any of the many doors and chests with even a small poison dart. And why is it that all the walls and ceilings of an ancient cavern are made of solid (and infinitely stable) chunks of stone?
Where are the rock slides, the jets of poisoned gas, swinging axe blades, and collapsing floors that made the parties of yore quiver in fear and desire at the sight of each passageway and treasure? It turns out that they’re towards the end of chapter 5, on page 87 of the DMG. You will find all the rules and details you need to spice up your purchased and home-brewed modules with a few challenges your players won’t see coming.
Put the fear of the trapped chest back into your players. If they don’t search a room for traps as their first move in an area, their next move might be their last.
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I started Dungeon Mastering with secondhand AD&D materials in 1996 and have run a vast number of D20 campaigns, from cliche' medieval adventures in a kingdom made of Lego bricks to fighting zombies and the mob in the mid 1930s. I try to make the gaming experience as enjoyable, fast-paced, and easy to play as humanly possible. 
I disagree. I never enjoyed when the players decided to search every 5×5 square of a dungeon for traps, twice, to make sure they found everything. Liberal use of traps causes the game to slow to a crawl with search checks and isn’t fun for anyone.
I am willing to accept some meta-game to remove this problem and think that the couple-of-trap ecounters per dungeon is a decent compromise to avoid removing the concept of traps entirely.
While I completely disagree with JackofHearts, yeah, what he said. 4e is geared towards lots of exciting combats. Crawling through the dungeon at a snail’s pace doesn’t fit the mood they seem to be going for.
A trap on every door is not always the solution to an enjoyable session. Sometimes players just want to sit down at the table and wade through rooms of bad guys in 90s arcade brawler style. An unexpected trap would just be a speed bump in an otherwise cool montage of blood and fire.
But the formula can get old, even for the most enthusiastic door busters. What’s worse is when you have a character take a feat to train in thievery just in case and never gets to use it.
I guess it all depends on the group. Do what’s right for the players at that point in the story. If you need fast, it’s already there for you, but if you need more variety, you know where to find it.
There is a certain romance in the old days of keeping a 10′ pole handy and wearing gauntlets while opening doors and chests, but there’s one big thing keeping the old style traps from feeling right in 4e: the advent of healing surges makes anything else than instant death outside of combat into “Fail a roll: lose x healing surges.”
I think they do still have a place, though. You just have to approach them right. Rather than isolated events, integrate them with other encounters and the rest of the dungeon. Rather than just inflicting damage, have then inflict status effects that will influence upcoming (or ongoing) combat, or alter the flow of the dungeon. Just a few examples:
If the big tempting treasure chest is opened before the trap is disarmed, an iron cage falls and traps anyone adjacent to it while an alarm bell rings. The PCs have only a few rounds to free their compatriot or he’ll be a sitting duck during the fight.
The door is perfectly harmless if opened normally, but if kicked down fills a close burst 1 centered on the door with poison gas that Weakens anyone hit, with a -2 to their saves. Anyone can bypass it by using the handle, but a clever rogue could rig it to go off if the door is opened at all, then lure the orc warlord through it by raising a false alarm.
The pressure plate halfway down that long corridor doesn’t start a giant boulder rolling down it. It drops a giant stone slab over the entrance and several other doors in key areas that forces the PCs to go through heavily guarded chokepoints as they explore the dungeon, making for a tougher run. Of course the control to allow the doors to be raised is in the boss’s room.
And then of course there’s all the poison dart launchers and scything blade traps that make great terrain hazards during a regular combat encounter.. and a great excuse for PCs to use all those cool movement-affecting abilities.
I’m a huge fan of How To Host A Dungeon. I’ve posted two articles of house rules for it – one being a fairly major expansion to the civilization rules set with a new civilization.
Major Rules Set:
http://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/how-to-host-a-dungeon-kuo-toa-and-other-muck-dwellers/
Minor House Rules:
http://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/how-to-host-a-dungeon-deep-gnomes-other-house-critters/