First Time Poster -- New to RPGs

[Texas.Crude]

I've been reading the forums off an on for a while now, but figured it's time to jump in and request some help!

I played 3.5e with a group of friends for about two years in Chapel Hill, but recently moved to Houston and am trying to start up a new gaming group. It looks like I'll have enough players to get a game going, but it also looks like I'll be the only one who's really played D&D before (outside of a few brief experiences in high school).

At this point, I'm leaning towards putting together a Pathfinder campaign (the group I played with was pretty critical of 4.0, and my pride keeps me from giving it a fair chance these days), but don't know anything beyond that. As this will be my first time being a DM, and many of their first times playing a D20 game, I need some advice on an adventure path that I could buy and would give everyone a good overall experience. Something that isn't just a dungeon loot-and-plunder experience, but still contains plenty of the classic elements they are likely expecting. Also, I need something easy to DM, as I have no freakin clue what I'm doing.

Oh, and do most people use miniatures? I guess I've only played with the one group, so I don't have a good idea of what other options are.

Thanks in advance!

[Tyndmyr]

If you know 3.5, you basically know PF...they're very similar. 4e is a fairly different game from either of them, so if familiarity is a major consideration, definitely want to stick with 3.5/PF, though of course, player preference is also a consideration.

I've heard fairly good things about Kingmaker, and the one module of it I own does look pretty solid. I played Rise of the Runelords, and was rather underwhelmed by it...it felt like it was mostly ripped off lots of classic stuff I've already played, and had little originality in it. That said, other gamers appear to enjoy it.

On the 3.5 front, Red Hand of Doom is a pretty solid module, and can easily be run in 3.5. It's got lots of classic elements, but has more to it than a straight dungeon crawl, so it's a pretty decent choice if they haven't done it yet.

I'm currently running RttoEE, and that also seems to be fairly solid. Sure, it's heavy on old school dungeon crawling, but that's not ALL of it.

I'm a fan of minis myself...sometimes I use regular ones, sometimes I use legos. Often, there are placeholders while I search for the perfect one. I am a HUGE fan of wet-erase grids, though. So useful.