At the beginning of the adventure as the party gets to the ruins, it describes creatures coming toward them in the jungle, before the collapse...but it never describes who or what? How do you guys run that?
It is a jungle setting so you could add a dinosaur stampede, perhaps with a T-rex chasing some prey. If you make it sound overwhelming enough then the players might flee and the tremors in the ground could lead to the opening scene of the module as they run away. The group could also be a tribe of local warriors who have noticed the party and are there to drive them off the holy land dedicated to the temple. The people could also be locals looking for some folks to rescue someone from the temple and use them as a plot hook depending on whatever else you have set up to get the players motivated to explore the shrine.
Alternatively :), play it by ear, the party I am DMing just arrived at Tamaochan and set up camp. They are on a mission to recover a magic item from the Shrine for a dealer in Saltmarsh (the current campaign is a mash up of GoS, TftYP, and a couple of other modules using some of the geography from Greyhawk mixed with some FR stuff (like the Lost City of Mezro from Chult)). Anyway, when they arrived they were looking for something underground since the city is overgrown with ruins. The druid talked to a small burrowing mammal and asked it if it was aware of any large underground spaces. The creature indicated sort of yes and scampered off to show them, the party followed quickly because it was running quickly, didn't check the ground and triggered the cave in that starts the module.
Overall, it worked ok but the module does have a bit of a railroad feel in terms of how it starts. There is some limited content related to the characters entering from the other end at the pyramid so you could take a quick read through and run it from end to beginning if you place whatever they are looking for near the cave in region (there is a tomb there that would make a good location if the party has a specific reason to go here).
Motivation was the biggest issue I found with this module. As Lyxen mentioned it appears to have been intended as a tournament module or something similar so the only motivational text is something like "of course when the party hears about the tomb and likely treasure they will just have to go investigate" ... which I find doesn't work for most parties. So I have a patron paying the party on behalf of a client to recover a specific item with bonus payment to consist of them keeping whatever else they find. (Though we will see if that goes over well with the natives and others who might not like a group pillaging local ruins :) ).
At the beginning of the adventure as the party gets to the ruins, it describes creatures coming toward them in the jungle, before the collapse...but it never describes who or what? How do you guys run that?
There are a few options.
It is a jungle setting so you could add a dinosaur stampede, perhaps with a T-rex chasing some prey. If you make it sound overwhelming enough then the players might flee and the tremors in the ground could lead to the opening scene of the module as they run away. The group could also be a tribe of local warriors who have noticed the party and are there to drive them off the holy land dedicated to the temple. The people could also be locals looking for some folks to rescue someone from the temple and use them as a plot hook depending on whatever else you have set up to get the players motivated to explore the shrine.
Alternatively :), play it by ear, the party I am DMing just arrived at Tamaochan and set up camp. They are on a mission to recover a magic item from the Shrine for a dealer in Saltmarsh (the current campaign is a mash up of GoS, TftYP, and a couple of other modules using some of the geography from Greyhawk mixed with some FR stuff (like the Lost City of Mezro from Chult)). Anyway, when they arrived they were looking for something underground since the city is overgrown with ruins. The druid talked to a small burrowing mammal and asked it if it was aware of any large underground spaces. The creature indicated sort of yes and scampered off to show them, the party followed quickly because it was running quickly, didn't check the ground and triggered the cave in that starts the module.
Overall, it worked ok but the module does have a bit of a railroad feel in terms of how it starts. There is some limited content related to the characters entering from the other end at the pyramid so you could take a quick read through and run it from end to beginning if you place whatever they are looking for near the cave in region (there is a tomb there that would make a good location if the party has a specific reason to go here).
Motivation was the biggest issue I found with this module. As Lyxen mentioned it appears to have been intended as a tournament module or something similar so the only motivational text is something like "of course when the party hears about the tomb and likely treasure they will just have to go investigate" ... which I find doesn't work for most parties. So I have a patron paying the party on behalf of a client to recover a specific item with bonus payment to consist of them keeping whatever else they find. (Though we will see if that goes over well with the natives and others who might not like a group pillaging local ruins :) ).