Rise of the Runelords, Anniversary Edition, for an AP
If however, you are looking to introduce your (new?) players to the world of Golarion, you may want to run them through some modules or even some scenarios instead of an AP
APs are lonnnnnnnnggggg so part of the decision with one is knowing that you and your players will most likely be playing it for months, if not years, depending on your frequency of play sessions
You could do worse than to start your players out with 'We be Goblins', then kick off 'Rise of the Runelords; Burnt Offerings' if everything goes well. Otherwise; what Lamontius said... :p
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So, there is nothing wrong with the Beginners Box.
For me, I'm a fan of the following adventures:
Hollow's Last Hope
Crown of the Kobold King
Revenge of the Kobold King
Carnival of Tears
Hungry Are the Dead
First and third you get for free. Pair them with "Pathfinder Chronicles: Guide to Darkmoon Vale" and you have a nice Region to play with.
Also the Adventure "Into the haunted Forest" fits to the Darkmoon Vale stuff.
Sometimes these adventures have "Listen" and "Spot" instead of Perception, also "Jump" on its own. Just remainings from the 3.5 material, nothing to get confused.
Greetings.
If you are experienced and it is the players who are new, then Kingmaker could be a lot of fun. You can include the kingdom building rules or not, whatever maximizes the fun.
Re: length of time to play...
Just to compare, I started Rise of the Runelords in June 2011, and we're only about 2/3 of the way through it!
Length of time varies from group to group, day to day. Some times, your group just can't play or you can't run. Let me quickly just post up how much time I've spent on a few things.
Kingmaker: First game lasted eight months and we never finished the second book. Second game lasted five months and I never touched the second module. Third game lasted five months and I just touched the fourth book. Fourth game is on its fourth month and the first module with a variety of new events and sites hasn't been finished.
Note on the above: All games but the last one ended.
Skull & Shackles: First module book was finished after a month, the second module was on going for three months before I called it to an end.
Legacy of Fire: First module book took two months, the second module took up to four months before I ended the game.
Reign of Winter: Started the first module the day of after release as a PDF, just attained the Mantle. Fridays are a cursed, cursed RP day.
Going on to the original topic; my suggestion would be... none of them. None of the Adventure Paths are good for complete beginners, instead I would suggest the Beginner Box and several of the free modules offered by Paizo. If the GM has some experience as a GM and the players no experience as players, I would hazard towards Rise of the Runelord or Crimson Throne. If there is some experience with the system and roleplaying in general, the Skull & Shackles, Carrion Crown, and Legacy of Fire.
Please, seriously, leave Kingmaker alone until the entire group is experienced and you all know each other's styles. Wait a year or two before trying to run this AP.
In addition to being newbie-friendly Rise of the Runelords is very GM-friendly since it's got a lot of community support (by AP standards) in the form of custom maps, ideas, rules etc.
RotRL is also quite nice since the first AP section can be played as a stand-alone - the campaign comes to a satisfactory end at the end of Burnt Offerings if you decide the Golarion and/or AP is not for you.
Reign of Winter: Started the first module the day of after release as a PDF, just attained the Mantle. Fridays are a cursed, cursed RP day.Which book is the Mantle in? What level are you guys at now?
First book and they just reached level 3.
RotRL:AE has been incredibly difficult for my party of newer players. I don't recommend it as a starting point. Lots of the enemies are incredibly deadly. Kingmaker is very easy in that you really only need to have 1 (sometimes more) fight(s)/day. Lots of RP potential, and the quality of the adventure path relies entirely on you as a GM. The only other one I've played was Jade Regent, was a lot of fun and wasn't overly deadly. Highly recommend.
That's a good point, the RotRL could probably do with some tuning down - parts of it relies on players that realize what x y and z means and how to counter it.
My new dm and party with limited experience are doing Mummy's Mask. (book 2 six months in)
Some of us survived all of Wrath of the Rightious. Wrath for all its faults wasnt bad for beginners. Sure near the end things got crazy but we built to that. By crazy I mean actions in a round. (BTW That took 2 years to complete.)
We are enjoying RotRL alot. We just got to the Manor and having a blast. (book 2 4 months in)
I do not recomend Hell's Rebles for beginners. Everyone I am playing with dm's pathfinder for different groups and find this AP to be a bit rough. I also would say with are leaving the beginner DM phase and entering to middling (journeyman...?) we still reference old systems.
Kingmaker's great for new players. It's a sandbox campaign with a less structured story that allows players to explore at their own pace. The plot is very attractive for newer players, too - you get the opportunity to build a country from the ground up and eventually lead huge armies into battle. It was also one of the earliest APs so it doesn't take more than the CRB and Bestiary 1 to run. Each book ends with a more traditional dungeon crawl. For first-time players you don't get much better than this.
If you do run Kingmaker, the decision to include or remove the kingdom-building system fundamentally alters the AP. Running it without them removes a big draw on the AP, but the rules in Kingmaker Book 2 aren't very self-made - I used the Ultimate Campaign rules instead. My groups plays for nearly 16 hours straight once a week - we started in early 2014 and finished early 2016 (I did add a ton of content and we took a break in the middle - overall Id say it took just over a year and 3 months to complete the AP, with Book 2 taking the longest of then all.