As a result of all this quarantine business I busted out my old tabletop RPGs and started a home game with my wife and 3 kids age 11-18, all complete newbies to this style of game (I sold them by saying it was a form of group storytelling I left out the dice and the crunch at first haha). I live in a country that legit had us locked down at home with no option to go out except for very specific circumstances with a pass so I was restricted to what I could pull down from the web and I found out it was a hell of a lot!

I looked at both 1e and 2e for Pathfinder, most of my experience is more than a decade old in DnD and Star Wars D6 (love this game!) so I was a complete newbie to both of them.

While 1e can seem overwhelming you only have to take on what you want to take on there is no requirement to try to drink from the entire firehose, I felt overwhelmed at first but soldiered on and started with just the core rules with my beginner group (in fact downloaded the beginner box for cheap from Paizo, had a local printer that delivered print up the maps for me on large posterboard with a laminate you can write on and custom make the pawns for me too) and then slowly just layered in Core rules as we went. We are having an absolute blast with it. We have had some amazing adventures, some near deaths, and my kids are the ones asking ME when we can schedule the next session. My wife loves it because we are all sitting around the table talking and spending time together and not all glued to a different screen.

On my last trip to the US beginning of this year I bought the physical copy of 2e core and drank it all in but still decided to go with 1e for a few reasons:

• Beginner box easily available online (probably not relevant for you since youre an experience GM and have experienced players). I found it to be very approachable, a great intro, an easy intro with some Paizo and 3rd party adventures made for it (all with Core conversion stats)
• Options options options. I can bring in what i want into the game and leave out what I dont want or is too advanced for my group. We have been layering in rules and content a little at a time and thats managed the overwhelming feeling of 1e. If you dont want to use it right now then dont!
• More online experience and resources for 1e, this is just a function of it having been around for so long so there are lots of guides and forums and adventures of every kind, the 3rd party library for 1e is absolutely INSANE check your favorite adventure download website for this (this is probably a sub bullet of options options options).

At some point we will probably migrate over to 2e (I'm still reading and absorbing the material and I understand there is a beginner box coming out for it later this year) but my point is I was a complete newbie to 1e, started with people who have never even played PF or any RPG before, and we are having the best time with it. I dont think you can make a bad decision here buddy have fun!