I'd honestly have to write off most of my favorite JRPGs and maybe even a few of my favorite WRPGs. Anything with a lot of micromanagement or busywork from bygone days is probably going to make a newcomer lose interest too quickly. So, sadly, we'd have to start with more streamlined pieces. Or things like Mass Effect, where the side quests have purpose, and everyone talks, and there's a lot of high stakes intensity to keep you interested and going. I don't think Baldur's Gate is going to have the same appeal to a newcomer as it did to hardcore PC gamers back in the day. Might be able to work up to that, but that would be far from my immediate goal

And old RPGs, especially NES ones would probably be off the table. I'd honestly question the legitimacy of appeal to new comers for games even on the SNES, and maybe even PS2. Because at least as far as JRPGs go, the random encounter rate was completely ridiculous until recently. And the only reason we trudged through them is because we were already fans. If I were to introduce someone to say Albert Odyssey, an amusing little starter RPG that has a reprehensible encounter rate that can quite literally get you into a battle every two steps, it's not going to have the same appeal. Hell I only endured it because I'd gotten used to it on better games like Final Fantasy VI and Phantasy Star IV. I built up that tolerance. And it makes me sad that even the redone Skies of Arcadia still has an encounter rate that just ruins the game for me anymore

With that in mind, I would agree that more modern WRPGs are probably better places to start. And with BioWare you get a lot of social aspects too. And a lot of "movie" moments, where you get the same intensity as watching a big budget movie on the big screen. Kudos to them for capturing that from time to time

I'm trying to think of more traditional games. I think maybe Xenogears or Xenosaga may be good starter JRPGs. They're big budget with large casts and lots of cinema and running around talking reading and learning and not a huge emphasis on random encounters. The encounter rates may still be a little ridiculous. But there's so much time spent doing other stuff between dungeons it may be more forgivable to a newcomer