Hi,
I'm still in the early stages of GMing, although I've absorbed as much information as I can outside of actually sitting at a table, and it's for 5 or 6 players with varying levels of experience in tabletop games.
I'm looking to introduce the players to the idea of creating and developing a character, leveling up, choosing skills to suit the adventure they're on etc. They're all expecting relatively high fantasy, and to be honest that's what I prefer. I don't mind a bit of flavor from other genres, however the Pathfinder world gives me problems that I seem to experience with every designed-by-committee fantasy setting in that there are inevitably aspects that I find silly, even in a made up universe. Off the top of my head I'm thinking about the WWI thing in RoW and Iron Gods in its entirety so I would like to avoid those and any others that deviate too much from straight up fantasy.
I'd also like to do a lot of dungeon crawling and dump the players in to skill and combat-heavy action as soon as possible. I do like the idea of using maps, and I think this would give the players who are more comfortable pushing tokens around a board something familiar to do while they're acclimatising to roleplaying. Mummy's Mask seems like the best for dungeon crawling, but again it's too far from traditional fantasy for new players, I think. I'm also only familiar with it from second hand accounts.
Ideally I'd like a fair amount of fantasy tropes. Goblins/Orcs. Undead if possible. Kobolds, gnolls etc etc. Some of paizos interesting monsters. (It sometimes kind of annoys me how many encounters involve rats, bats, dogs and ruffians from the local docks)
I'm not a hundred percent familiar with all the APs, although I have several of them. I'd be happy to buy more.
Here's the ones I'm familiar enough with to consider -
Giantslayer (Lots of combat, love the setting although there seems to be at least an hour of roleplay at the beginning and I think a main criticism is that it devolves in to tedious fights against similar giants)
RotRL (Straight in to the action, but then seems to slow down and I'm not sure there's much in the way of dungeons although I only read the first book about two years ago)
S&S (The boat is interesting, starts with some combat, only read the first book so I don't know where it goes. Firearms could be an issue)
CC (Lots of dungeons, lots of Undead, perhaps not good for martial characters?)
Here's the ones I'm looking to avoid -
Iron Gods (Too sci-fi)
Kingmaker (Too much sandbox. Mass combat and kingdom building rules aren't representative of the game)
Jade Regent (Eastern flavour seems silly. I hear that the caravan rules are horribly broken)
WotR (We have a morally suspect character)
Players are going for druid, cavalier, witch, rogue, ranger and paladin if that makes a difference.
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Okay. Seeing you want dungeon crawling fairly early on...
Rise of the Runelords. Your characters will be dungeon-delving by 3rd level. They start with goblins. They graduate in time to undead, and then ogres and giants, with the occasional dragon tossed in for flavour.
It is a high fantasy campaign in many ways, and with some work can also get people attached to their starting town (where they will stay for a while). And there's plenty of fan-crafted background material.
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I will admit I'm partial to Reign of Winter, but the primary dungeon delving doesn't happen 'til Book 3. Also, the other worlds aspect will probably throw you off. That said, it does work with morally suspect characters.
You COULD try Hell's Rebels. It is an urban setting, but you do get some form of dungeon-delving (really, any combat in a building could be considered "dungeon-delving") and fighting against the entrenched government is always fun, even if that government is an evil one. ;)
But mostly, I'd say RotRL fits your bill.
Shattered Star is also pretty heavy on the dungeon-delving. The PCs are trying to re-assemble an ancient artifact (and they actually get to make use of it in the last book). Suits the high-fantasy bill pretty well, and has some really interesting locations/characters/monsters. There is some set-up at the beginning, but the dungeon crawls start pretty quickly thereafter.
Of note, it assumes the PCs are all members of a specific organization, the Pathfinder Society, though they could have joined for whatever reason they want. If that doesn't work with your players' character concepts, might not be the best.
Shattered Star is also pretty heavy on the dungeon-delving. The PCs are trying to re-assemble an ancient artifact (and they actually get to make use of it in the last book). Suits the high-fantasy bill pretty well, and has some really interesting locations/characters/monsters. There is some set-up at the beginning, but the dungeon crawls start pretty quickly thereafter.
Of note, it assumes the PCs are all members of a specific organization, the Pathfinder Society, though they could have joined for whatever reason they want. If that doesn't work with your players' character concepts, might not be the best.
Shattered Star is very very dungeon heavy - the only competitor honestly would be Legacy of Fire. The 'belong to a specific organization' is as easy to wave as turning off a light switch. You can call the pathfinder in question a strange wizard that wants to hire you and the story doesn't really change at all by a single spec of dust. In fact you could remove all references to the organization - put the same NPC in a black coat and call them the evil overlord of the empire of ghall and the adventure really wouldn't change much - as far as that goes. The only thing that would stop your party really is not wanting to collect an artifact of unimaginable power and put it together.
Both of the above suggestions are good options for what you seek. Shattered Star is more geographically spread out, thus allowing more room for breaks from the dungeon environment.
Rappan Athuk is a wonderful old school megadungeon.
I'm not sure how Mummy's Mask diverges from high fantasy. It's a classic undead heavy dungeon romp, IMO. We had all of our younger players watch The Mummy to prepare. The MM threads have links to some printable maps for the first 2 books that ate just plain awesome. My group just finished book 2 and we moved on to Giantslayer for a few months.
GS is really a shout out to Against the Giants from 1E AD&D. It does not go straight into dungeon delving, though there is enough to keep it interesting (I like dungeons). It is about as traditional as you can get: orcs and giants aplenty. As a GM, the hardest part is going to be creating the massive maps. A few are larger than a Chessex Mondo Mat.
One of my MM players has RotRL and he ran part of it a few years ago for several of our group (I did not partake). They all loved it, from what I know.
I think Rise of the Runelords is an excellent "traditional fantasy" AP and it's also a great introduction to Golarion.
Shattered Star was specifically written for fans of dungeons. Although it's not a megadungeon, there is an awful lot of dungeon crawling.
Like you I don't enjoy things like Iron Gods and Reign of Winter. However, I had a surprising amount of fun running Serpent's Skull (although I ran it using Dungeon Crawl Classics, which changed the character a little, I guess). If you have the energy to flesh out and rework the third instalment in particular, I think that might be worth looking in to (even though the synopsis may not read as your cup of tea).
Similarly, if you have access to the Age of Worms AP from Dungeon magazine days, I think that might fit what you're looking for - you'd need to convert from 3.5, but that's hardly a chore and it was known as a tough AP anyhow, so you could probably run it as-is with a group who weren't that crash hot on character building.
Here's another vote for Shattered Star - it is dungeon heavy (which is what you are looking for?) but with enough stuff outside of the dungeon exploration to break it up... I'd also consider Emerald Spire - it's pretty much all dungeon but there is a reasonably well fleshed out gazetteer for a nearby town so that you can mix it up a little (it also has a pretty good range of foes for your players to fight)...
Shattered star starts with all the monsters you said you didn't want. Its not a bad dungeon crawl but you either fight humans Or things forgotten for 1000s of years
Does it have to be a paizo product?
Shattered star starts with all the monsters you said you didn't want. Its not a bad dungeon crawl but you either fight humans Or things forgotten for 1000s of years
Does it have to be a paizo product?
Eh, most of the human enemies are in the beginning (first two books) and they aren't generally the only enemies in a dungeon, but ymmv. It does have some undead (mummies, a lacedon in the first book) and some pretty interesting monsters throughout. It also has tons of somewhat shady allies the PCs can have at various points. Personal opinion whether you like that or not (I did).
Rise of the Runelords would also be a good option from what I hear of it, but I haven't played it myself.
Ran to a neutral evil party so they found many freaks to talk too especially in mod 1
Rise of the Runelords has a very old school dungeony feel to it.
You get goblins and undead early on along with several encounters with a monster designed for the AP.
Dungeons are around Sandpoint so the players can learn to roleplay as they go along and do as much or as little of it as they want. And the dungeons keep coming, virtually every level of play has a dungeon of some size and form.
Rise of the Runelords, certainly. It's traditional in feel, has plenty monster variety (albeit a bit heavy on Ogres/Giants) and a ton of different dungeons.
Skulls and Shackles is very humanoid based and doesn't have a lot of dungeon crawling in it, I wouldn't recommend that one based on your criteria.
Avoid Hell's Rebels. It's a fantastic AP, but it's Urban and Social. There are dungeons, but not so many in the traditional sense and it's very heavily skewed towards Human opponents.