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Rhiannon87
2009-12-15, 10:23 PM
How many people use different voices for characters, either as a DM or PC?

One of the guys in our group is really good with voices, and does a lot of different accents when he's DMing, and his PCs usually have particular voices as well. Another player has a particular high-pitched voice he uses for his feral halfling. It's fun and adds to the game, and it lets us tell when someone is in-character or not, and we can make jokes about someone talking in their Hvall-voice or Roscoe-voice.

The reason I ask is because I'm playing a spy, and her latest cover identity is a character that, whenever I hear her in my head, has a British accent. I can fake British reasonably well (well enough for my all-American group to tell what I'm doing), and last time I used this cover, I started to go into the accent-- and several players commented on it as rather odd. So I kind of wavered on it and didn't really commit to that cover's voice, as it were. But I'm going to be using her again, and I want to make a decision about the accent.

Do others here think it would be annoying, moreso than any other character voices? Any suggestions for things I could try to indicate my character is playing a character? The group will all have been told that she's working in a cover beforehand, but reminders so they don't accidentally call her by her real name are always good.

GallóglachMaxim
2009-12-15, 10:30 PM
I use accents when I DM in person, usually just to make NPCs a bit more identifiable, since having a distinct voice could make the faceless NPCs less faceless. As a player, not usually, because there's more non-game talk going on. That said, my current character has an internal monologue going in a very incongruous south London accent.

Temotei
2009-12-15, 10:32 PM
How many people use different voices for characters, either as a DM or PC?

One of the guys in our group is really good with voices, and does a lot of different accents when he's DMing, and his PCs usually have particular voices as well. Another player has a particular high-pitched voice he uses for his feral halfling. It's fun and adds to the game, and it lets us tell when someone is in-character or not, and we can make jokes about someone talking in their Hvall-voice or Roscoe-voice.

The reason I ask is because I'm playing a spy, and her latest cover identity is a character that, whenever I hear her in my head, has a British accent. I can fake British reasonably well (well enough for my all-American group to tell what I'm doing), and last time I used this cover, I started to go into the accent-- and several players commented on it as rather odd. So I kind of wavered on it and didn't really commit to that cover's voice, as it were. But I'm going to be using her again, and I want to make a decision about the accent.

Do others here think it would be annoying, moreso than any other character voices?

I use a British accent every once in a while when I'm DMing. Sing-song voices for elves sometimes work. Gnomes get a squeaky voice or a slightly lower voice that cracks a little.

I love making up voices too. I think your character could easily use the accent to further the disguise. If the disguise is being used to avoid being seen as your character's real person, then as DM, I'd probably give a +1 bonus...just because I like to hear new things, and making the game better with fun little details like that is really cool.

Brendan
2009-12-15, 10:33 PM
I started the campaign with an accent, so that they would get what it sounded like, but then stopped and told them to imagine it, as it is tiring, and imagination beats reality any time.

Optimystik
2009-12-15, 10:54 PM
I tend to do a cockney accent for halflings, just like Tomi Undergallows from NWN. (I even picture that halfling in the Greysky Thieves' Guild that way.)

rayne_dragon
2009-12-15, 11:00 PM
I tend to only do it when DMing to make characters more interesting than "shopkeeper ed" and "sockmender bob". I sometimes try it for my characters as a player, but I tend to be unable to stick with anything consistantly if its much different than my real voice.

For some reason I adhere to the Dwarves are Scottish school of thought.

Temotei
2009-12-15, 11:02 PM
Also, Sean Connery is so fun to imitate. Hard not to laugh if you do it constantly though. :smallbiggrin:

Yukitsu
2009-12-15, 11:12 PM
I'm currently playing an elf paladin who is pretending to be a human rogue, and indicating his fake accent by using a fake British/Australian accent.

My other character is based off of Alma Wade, so I don't actually have to talk all that much. Sadly, I've been sent on two diplomatic missions in the campaign, where I usually use stuttery speech, with one word sentances, and long pauses. Those were some of the worst sections for talking in our groups history. :smallsigh:

AslanCross
2009-12-15, 11:19 PM
I do my best to voice-act my PCs and NPCs.

Psychosis
2009-12-15, 11:32 PM
Accents are often used within my group, for humor or otherwise. Our DM always includes one Scottish elf per campaign as part of a running gag, and I myself have given a half-orc rogue a Brooklyn accent for no particular reason.

RandomLunatic
2009-12-15, 11:53 PM
I used to.

My group asked me to stop, under pain of books to the head, because I was really bad at it.

BloodyAngel
2009-12-15, 11:55 PM
I do accents for NPC's when I can. Less often with playing. As a DM, it gives the NPC's more flavor... and they can usually tell a character by his accent or pattern of speech. (Although I'm not blessed with an amazing talent for accents, alas)

In the game I'm currently running, we have a spanish swashbuckler type (For the senoritas!), a woman with a hideously strong cockney accent (Oy! Wha're y' talkin' 'bout?) and a very even toned, well spoken noble. The three even come across very different when I type for them and run the game online. The woman omits a good half of her vowels and runs her words together... the spaniard litters his speech with spanish words that I look up online, and the nobleman has a highly formal speech pattern and doesn't use slang or contractions in his speech. Sometimes how they speak can be just as distinctive as the silly accent. :smallbiggrin:

Deth Muncher
2009-12-16, 12:08 AM
I do accents! Example, my party just met a guy who is, effectively, Karchev (yes, THAT Karchev Warmachine players). I put on my best Russian accent. The fact that I aspire to be a voice actor and can do a crapton of different accents is a bonus. :P

I plan on utilizing them as much as possible later on. I plan on giving each race a stereotypical accent and just running from there, with major NPCs having their own accent/voices.

Shadowbane
2009-12-16, 12:20 AM
I do both! I also switch speech patterns, like my bard can talk in rhyme and pun nonstop, but my fighter talks in military terminology. I love roleplaying. :smallbiggrin:

sofawall
2009-12-16, 12:25 AM
My DM makes all reptilians talk like a lizardy Sean Connery. It's really funny to hear.

EDIT: Not on purpose, mind you.

penbed400
2009-12-16, 12:31 AM
Well my character had an accent that sounded rather like....well very similar to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIV4poUZAQo

OP: So in answer to your question, if my friends haven't killed me for constantly talking like the Knights of say Ni then you should do fine with a british accent. As for continuing to incorporate yourself within your character you could very well start adding character traits to it. Like said character mentioned before in my post also rhymed quite terribly, so if I rhymed I was usually in character. It doesn't have to verbal though, maybe you put a hand over your eye to indicate an eyepatch, or a hook hand, maybe your character makes multiple downcast looks and whatnot. If you associate the action for when you are obviously in character they will start noticing that whenever you do that quirk you are in character. Just make sure it isn't something you do in real life otherwise they may get confused :smalltongue: .

Other than have fun, I don't have any more suggestions.

Ernir
2009-12-16, 12:40 AM
Some characters get special voices. I never do accents, although creatures with anatomies not very suitable for speaking the language in question may get (additional) speech impediments.

Zom B
2009-12-16, 12:44 AM
I like to think of some sort of unique voice for my favorite characters. That way it's easy to differentiate ooc from ic speech. My Wiz/Clr/True Necromancer I played once spoke only in whispers (Ah, Samvhiid, how I miss you and your red-painted wood mask and red robe).

My current Wiz/Incantrix says things like, "Oh yeah! Right here! *points both thumbs at self* Ka-BOOM, baby!" I also had a wizard whose backstory was that he attempted to summon a minor spirit from the lower planes and failed, almost losing his life. The spirit inhabited his body and basically held his fragmented life essence together. As a result, he had to do what the spirit said or it would let him die. That was his motivation for being evil. To talk like him, I would breathe IN and constrict my throat a bit so that the air is 'popping' slightly as I breathe in, and speak pretty much normally except inhaling instead of exhaling. The effect is definitely unsettling and creepy.

Ormur
2009-12-16, 02:00 AM
Some characters get special voices. I never do accents, although creatures with anatomies not very suitable for speaking the language in question may get (additional) speech impediments.

And all the nobles have very deep voices, whether they're male or not. :smallbiggrin:

I can't do any accents in my native language because it hardly has any so, no. The best I can do is imitating a Frenchman trying too speak my language, maybe I'll try that sometimes with a minor NPC whose primary language isn't common.

Vorpalbob
2009-12-16, 02:11 AM
I once played a character who was autistic, and from France. As such, he didn't say much, and when he did speak, it was with the stereotypical rapid-fire french accent. He was the group's skillmonkey, and only contributed to dialogue when he got really upset. He also had very good ideas, and the group got very attached to him. when he died, there was actually a mock funeral held. :smallfrown: He wasn't buried, just put through the shredder.

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-12-16, 02:22 AM
I always use accents when I DM, rarely as a PC. I improv a heck of a lot, though, and thinking on my feet in a different accent doesn't always work so well; as Brendan does, I generally do the accent in the introductory scene and then let it slide. If I have multiple NPCs in one conversation, I'll try to vary my speaking to indicate who's who (a caaalm, draaawn-ouuut draaawl for a noooble, afastsqueakyvoiceforagnome, etc.) instead of the full-blown accents.

SilverSheriff
2009-12-16, 10:46 AM
I have a wide range of accents that I am capable of doing:


Irish
Scottish
English (Multiple sub-accents such as Cockney, Upper-class, etc.)
Italian/Greek crossover.
Russian
Swedish
Finnish (copied off of these two brothers who used to go to my old school)
Australian
Canadian


Accents and Voices make the game all the more fun...:smallbiggrin:

valadil
2009-12-16, 10:52 AM
I can do a lot of accents, but not while roleplaying. The accent alone takes up enough brainpower that I can't really RP while doing it. At best I'll throw out a couple accented sentences to show what someone sounds like, and then drop it entirely.

One of my GMs loves accents. We're playing a semi modern game of his right now, and I swear he's sending us to remote locations based one what accents he wants to try out.

drengnikrafe
2009-12-16, 10:56 AM
My accents are very poor, but I have a hard time seperating NPCs in large groups, sometimes. As a result, if there are a large number of NPCs that need to be independantly identified, I'll tack on accents just to make them be marginally different from each other. I try to stay away from it, though, since my only really good voice is the "Professional Announcer" voice.

dsmiles
2009-12-16, 11:09 AM
I do.

Dwarves - Highland Scottish Accent (Don't ask why, it just fits). Also, kilts.
Gnomes - Irish (Somewhat related to dwarves, but not the same).
High Elves/Grey Elves - Snooty British Upper Class (No offense intended)
Wood Elves/Wild Elves - British/Aussie mix
Halflings - Lower class cockney-type accent
Orcs - Orks
Humans - Wide variety of accents depending on location in the campaign world.

pffh
2009-12-16, 11:10 AM
There are so few accents( or regional dialects or whatever) in my language and the difference between them is so minor that even if I wanted to do accents I can't without heavily exaggerating the accent and then it just becomes silly.

Kris Strife
2009-12-16, 11:11 AM
My accents are very poor, but I have a hard time seperating NPCs in large groups, sometimes. As a result, if there are a large number of NPCs that need to be independantly identified, I'll tack on accents just to make them be marginally different from each other. I try to stay away from it, though, since my only really good voice is the "Professional Announcer" voice.

Movie Trailer, Monster Truck Commercial, or Car Commercial?

dsmiles
2009-12-16, 11:36 AM
Movie Trailer, Monster Truck Commercial, or Car Commercial?

Ooohh! I hope it's Monster Truck Commercial!

Shademan
2009-12-16, 11:43 AM
I like doing voices as DM
as player...meh, I have played humans mostly, when I play a female ogre barbarian I WILL make a funny voice...

Altair_the_Vexed
2009-12-16, 12:02 PM
Using an accent or a distinctive trait to the voice of a character is vital when you're DMing, I think. You need a shorthand way to show that different NPCs are different without saying "Lord Gothington says: blah bah blah bah blah."

It's good when you're playing, to help you and the other players get into the idea that the character is distinct from the player. Even if you just pick on a few vocal mannerisms - like always saying "D'ye see?" at the end of any point you're making, or something like that - you're already thinking about how a character is and behaves, instead of just using a bunch of stats to break a dungeon.

Ernir
2009-12-16, 12:18 PM
And all the nobles have very deep voices, whether they're male or not. :smallbiggrin:

Women are difficult. :smallfrown:

Thurbane
2009-12-16, 03:29 PM
Our DM is currently running EttRoG - the magic itemn shopkeep, Nulligan, has an interesting accent. The DM was going for a Welsh accent, but it ended up sounding more Swedish. We have decided that Nulligan officially has a Swelsh accent. :smallbiggrin:

Bonecrusher Doc
2009-12-16, 04:00 PM
If you're good at accents, I don't think most people would mind you using them.

If your accent is bad, you talk too slowly, hog the spotlight with your accent, or otherwise make it difficult for the other people to have to listen to you and understand what you are saying, then I'm sure it will be only moments before they insist you stop.

DabblerWizard
2009-12-16, 05:21 PM
As a DM I do voices with NPCs. I try to give accents to important NPCs, instead of all of them. I'm not at all a voice actor, so I imagine a lot of the voices are similar. Some of them are intentionally silly and meant to make players laugh. All in all, no one has complained about it, and I've actually received a compliment, so I guess I'll keep it up.

Drammel
2009-12-16, 05:55 PM
When I was DMing once and I had the party encounter a group of nomadic desert wanderers beside an oasis. It was meant to be a generic resupply and rest deal. I'd come to the table ill prepared that night, so I made up an accent on the spot. It was a really impressive combination of Canadian and Jamaican. I swear that I've never been able to duplicate it since. I dubbed these people the "Canajuns".

The wizard in the party thought it was the best thing he'd ever heard and got really into it. He asked me if he could freeze over the pool of water in the oasis and teach the locals hokey. It fit the zany spirit of the night so we worked out some impromptu rules for 'd20 hokey' and the party each took a team so that they could help the locals learn. The game was won at the last second when the Paladin managed to crit the coconut that they were using as a puck which the wizard had used a spell to freeze to the ice. I ruled that he'd sliced it cleanly in half and that the top half had scored the goal.

So, yeah, accents can add things to the game that you'd never quite expect. :smallwink:

oxybe
2009-12-16, 06:04 PM
hockey.

that is all.

starwoof
2009-12-16, 06:28 PM
Most of my characters sound something like Skeletor, but more annoying.

Lioness
2009-12-16, 07:32 PM
I'm not good at accents at all. The best I can do is sort of a bad attempt at English. Apparently I have a non-Aussie accent though, because people keep asking me where I come from.

However, our DM does different voices for his characters. Meeting the phanaton was fun...his accent just suited them so well. When I DM, I'll probably do accents to, just as a character...nah.

Moofaa
2009-12-16, 11:45 PM
I'm not good at accents at all. The best I can do is sort of a bad attempt at English. Apparently I have a non-Aussie accent though, because people keep asking me where I come from.

However, our DM does different voices for his characters. Meeting the phanaton was fun...his accent just suited them so well. When I DM, I'll probably do accents to, just as a character...nah.

Hoo-ray! This thread was making me feel like I was the only person that stinks with accents. I simply CAN'T do a convincing accent of any type. I've tried, and it just takes too much brain power so I end up sounding things out too slowly. Also doesnt help I think I have a very small speech impediment and I have to take time to think about what I say before I open my mouth or it won't come out right.

I've played with some people that are good at putting that sort of "life" into characters using accents. Its kind of intimidating when a 6'6" player leaps up and starts shouting in perfect russian in the middle of a Cthulu game, and my response is slow and thoughtful, and nothing at all like the rough and tumble Biker-gang-member-turned-investigator I am playing as should sound like.

I also failed spanish in HS because I couldnt pronounce words. Didn't help that I can't roll my R's and the teacher was a bit of a prick. Seemed to think that everyone could do it, maybe I am just a freak like that.

I also can't whistle.

Kallisti
2009-12-17, 02:03 AM
I do accents and voices for NPCs I plan to reuse sometimes, but I usually try to give them distinctive verbal habits, not just voices. Like Kerredai, the half-goblin bartender/secret agent, speaks in relatively short, simple, straightforward declarative sentences, Lady Jane Scalefriend always uses sentences at least twice as long as they have to be, and Kieran the gnome tinker uses "words" like "confusticate", "blastation," and "bebamboozled."

As a player, pretty much the same thing. Accents rarely, but distinctive speech habits and verbal ticks.

That said, my paladins always seem to end up sounding vaguely English for some reason. Although I always sound English...

Kris Strife
2009-12-17, 07:41 AM
That said, my paladins always seem to end up sounding vaguely English for some reason. Although I always sound English...

Well, what other class has more... well... class than paladins?

What accent has more class than a proper English one?

dsmiles
2009-12-17, 08:05 AM
and Kieran the gnome tinker uses "words" like "confusticate", "blastation," and "bebamboozled."


Soooooooo, he talks like George W?

Alcopop
2009-12-17, 09:13 AM
My evil characters tend to be british.

My warlocks are usually american.

My barbarians and clerics tend to be russian.

My artificers are quite often french. also once a mute >_>

My sorcerers mostly speak like I do (australian, normal, duh!), unless they're evil. :P


Sometimes it can feel uncomfortable to pull off an accent, my advise? come up with a few funny accented one liners and use em occasionally to get things rolling, after a while you'll be speaking in the accent and you won't even have noticed (nor will the other players). Humor is a great way of breaking things in comfortably and as a british spy your in no short stock of one liners.

Talya
2009-12-17, 09:36 AM
Canadian


Accents and Voices make the game all the more fun...:smallbiggrin:

I've never heard anyone fake a believeable English-Canadian accent. It's always extremely exaggerated, or sounding more like North Dakota or Wisconsin than Canadian. This is ironic, because the actual Canadian accent is not hard to do, it has only one change over standard midwestern American:

Words with the long-vowel pronunciation of the dipthong 'ou' (out, about, doubt, shout, etc.) need to be pronounced as if you were British. The rest of what we say uses the most mild neutral american accent possible. Americans tend to be unable to pronounce this, and instead use a long -oo sound, like in the word "boot" when trying to sound Canadian.

This also makes doing a neutral american accent rather easy for a Canadian...just change the pronunciation of those words to the short vowel dipthong -ow (such as is normal with the word 'cloud.')

While there are 'redneck' and regional English-Canadian accents that sound much different from the rest of Canada, that's about the only consistent difference.

Lemarc
2009-12-17, 10:20 AM
I very rarely use strong accents, and when I do I don't try to emulate any specific real-world dialect. I generally use a combination of faint, non-specific accents, slight variations in tones and pitch, and - most importantly in my opinion - different speech patterns. I vary the speed at which I talk, where I place the emphasis on words, the timbre of my voice, how much I hesitate, whether I talk a lot or a little, how direct my sentences are and that sort of thing. My notes on a character's voice are usually just a word or two, like "breezy", or "quick, stuttering", and when the time comes I just launch into it with those words in mind and go with whatever comes out. My players tell me my character portrayals are one of their favourite things about my DMing, so either it works pretty well or else I'm just terrible at everything else.