Constructing a D&D cartoon.

[Username17]

The advantage of starting characters in the real world and transporting them to the magic world is that they need to know all the same things that the audience does and can plausibly ask any question the audience would need to ask and receive any exposition that the audience would need to receive. But in a D&D party format, you can achieve that without doing anything so hamhanded and 1980s hokey. Just make the group have non-overlapping experiences. At the very base, having one character be from the Underdark and another character be from the Surface means that the Underdark character can give Underdark exposition to the Surface character (and the audience), and the Surface character can give Surface exposition to the Underdark character (and the audience).

The entire "transport from the real world to the fictional world" trope is totally unnecessary when you already have a party of adventurers with diverse backgrounds for your main characters.

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

Well, the entire point of my little suggestion was nostalgia for the original D&D cartoon and maintenance of continuity. Besides, no interaction between worlds was necessary for the original cartoon because the party's goal was to get home. If they could go home at any time there would be no adventure. In a situation where the goal is to save the universe, that's not an issue. The party can absolutely planeshift to Earth at the end of the episode. You can have portals open above Manhattan and spew out armies of demons, too. You can even set some major adventures on Earth.

Besides, Narnia did it first.

[Stubbazubba]

You do need to have some reason for everyone to explain everything to the POV character, but that has always been easy to do, as the seminal works of adventure and fantasy (D'Artagnan and Bilbo, respectively) prove. If you were more clever than that, you could do it Frank's way, and just make sure someone in the party always needs to be informed.

Real world people in fantasy world adventures, on the other hand, have been notoriously hit and miss. I don't really see what is to be gained by it; in fact, I would go so far as to say that it is most likely nothing more than a huge and unnecessary burden on the viewer's willing suspension of disbelief, and should be avoided until some brilliant application of the idea comes along, which it hasn't.

[infected slut princess]

Real-world people in a fantasy world is not "hit and miss," unless your definition of "hit and miss" is "stupid 99% of the time." It's a deal-breaker for many fantasy fans. Like seriously, they won't even TOUCH a series where that is the premise, just on first principles. But since this thread has some of the worst imaginable ideas ever for a D&D cartoon, the real-world people idea probably fits right in.