Thanks for sharing your gooning advice on how to raise tension and make things feel better /s

You could go about it in a more subtle way too. Like a good while earlier having a traumatized NPC tell them about how X uses certain types of plants or something to disguise traps. Then when they get to the area just tell them about the flora there and see if they remembered it. If they forgot, then getting surprise trapped is not unfair imo.

Foreshadowing is a pretty effective tool, yeah.

Ideally when the thing happens, whatever it is, the players go “oh that makes sense.”

When the party enters the room and you describe what they see, just casually say “You don’t see any traps”.

That’s usually enough.

I once ran a Dread campaign where the players were a group of tourists on a tour through a stalactite cavern. When they reached the deepest point of the tour, they heard an explosion from the entrance and the lights went out. As soon as the lights were out, someone (a disgruntled former employee of the stalactite cavern tour company) killed the tour guide with a crossbow.

The players then had to make their way through the long-abandoned and partially flooded other exit of the cavern.

I gave the killer a heavy, wheezing cough, so any time they spent too long discussing things, I would just cough. That was enough to bring the tension way up again.

When I hear “Bioshock goon”, my brain defaults to set them on fire and shock the water when they jump in to put themselves out.

And then there’s silksong

I prefer to use the Worf Effect

That looks suspiciously like Sheogorath

with the groups ive played with, they’ll nose dive face first into a trap just to see what happens. and thats only because my turn wasnt first 😂