Accents and dialects?

[MonkeySage]

I'm wondering how people feel about role playing characters with a variety of accents; I know that a bad accent can ruin immersion, but I feel like a game where everyone has the same accent could quickly get dull.
My real accent is somewhere between a midwestern and southern accent(U.S.)
I've played NPCs, and an evil cleric with a Dixie accent. I've got a knight and tried to give her my best impression of a Scottish accent, but she ended up with something more like Cockney(how that happened, I have no idea). Undoubtedly butchered Cockney at that. :/

I'm trying to avoid stereotypes.

What do you guys think?
Also, if anyone has suggestions(particularly if you speak an accent that I named), I would love to read them.

[Amphetryon]

Typically, the groups I've known have either used accents not native to their speakers only during the first session or two, to establish tone, or have made it even more abstract. Explanatory comments like "Gronk, as a member of the Tropiat tribe of the northeast mountains, has an accent we'd call 'Slavic'" or similar, so that nobody is attempting an accent they cannot pull off, and nobody is going to accidentally offend someone else's heritage by butchering the accent of a fellow RPer's 'Old Country.'

[Spartakus]

Depends heavily on your group, the tone of your adventure and your ability to speak that accent.

In my group everyones native accent is a pretty clear high german (i.e. no accent at all) and it is pretty much impossible to speak in another accdent without immediatly raising cultural stereotypes and sounding funny.

That being said I tatally love playing my necromancer with a (propably totally butchered) russian accent. Most spells (I'm looking at you Ray of Enfeeblement) sound absoulutly hilarious in accent. But I would not recommend doing this in a horror-campaign.

[Beleriphon]

Depends heavily on your group, the tone of your adventure and your ability to speak that accent.

In my group everyone's native accent is a pretty clear high German (i.e. no accent at all) and it is pretty much impossible to speak in another accent without immediately raising cultural stereotypes and sounding funny.

That being said I totally love playing my necromancer with a (probably totally butchered) Russian accent. Most spells (I'm looking at you Ray of Enfeeblement) sound absolutely hilarious in accent. But I would not recommend doing this in a horror-campaign.

I can manage a half decent Quebecois French accent, but living in Canada that isn't terribly hard. My impersonation of Boris Yelstin is pretty good so I've busted that out when I want to do Russian. German isn't too hard an English speaker for the most part since its largely a matter of changing the way I pronounce certain consonants more than anything.

[Anonymouswizard]

I have a home counties accent and most of my characters are Londoners, although most people can't tell what my accent is (I've used the term 'geographical non-accent before). However, otherwise we've generally done the 'blah blah blah said in [insert accent here], because that's where they're from and I can't do accents' because none of us can do accents without falling into our natural ones.

[Talyn]

I've got a moderately strong "educated" New England (note: NOT Boston, which is a different beast) accent, but so do most people in my group so, as previous posters have said, that's the "normal."

I can do a variety of accents pretty well - but I can only do it for a few sentences, at which point it begins to shift unpredictably. So, for minor characters or single lines, I'll go all out and do the accent as best I can, but for any kind of lengthy conversation, I use the accent for the first line, then switch to my natural accent.

As far as what accents to use, our group's current campaign deliberately draws from historical and cultural groups for the different races and cultures, so that gives me starting point for accents.

Unfortunately, we've taken a page from Tolkien's book and based our Dwarvish on Hebrew, and I can't do an Israeli accent to save my life! Instead, I use a generic "Scandinavian" accent for Dwarves instead.

(Apologies to native Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian speakers, because I know there are significant differences between your accents, but I'm an American and I cannot for the life of me differentiate them.)

[acid_ninja]

I like dialect, if not accent. Give your world a unique slang - check out planescape, or this actual dictionary of thieves' cant.

"The master of this dungeon is a powerful necromancer and his chief lieutenant is a clever rogue"

vs

"The high-up man of the gaff is a trig bone-dancer and his mate's a knight of the post, a rum cully"

Obviously, that's laying it a bit thick, but I find real world (if obscure) slang works best.

[Spartakus]

I can manage a half decent Quebecois French accent, but living in Canada that isn't terribly hard. My impersonation of Boris Yelstin is pretty good so I've busted that out when I want to do Russian. German isn't too hard an English speaker for the most part since its largely a matter of changing the way I pronounce certain consonants more than anything.

Well, if it is about what I can do, I can give a bavarian (east frankonian to be precise) dialect due to family from there. Also a good impersonation of chancellor Angela Merkel. But around here those two cannot be used outside of parody. I guess german doesn't view it's dialects as positive as the english language does theirs.

[BWR]

I'm not particularly good at producing accents (I probably think I'm better than I actually am) but my NPCs usually are presented with a note about the sort of accent/dialect they use if it isn't a local one.

One thing I've noticed is how the general perception of a foreign accent in English is actually quite different from the real foreign accent in English. Listen to how German, Russian or Scandinavian accents are portrayed in English-speaking media, then listen to actual Germans, Russians or Scandinavians speaking English. I suppose you can always go for the more exaggeratedly bad but genuine accents, but most Scandinavians aren't nearly this bad, at least those under the age of 50.

[MonkeySage]

Well, if it is about what I can do, I can give a bavarian (east frankonian to be precise) dialect due to family from there. Also a good impersonation of chancellor Angela Merkel. But around here those two cannot be used outside of parody. I guess german doesn't view it's dialects as positive as the english language does theirs.

Oh there's still a bit of a stigma in English accents, mostly a sort of classist stigma; for example, a Mississippi or Alabama accent as heard by a Midwestern person. The southerner is sort of viewed as lower class, maybe an uneducated redneck. They could be a Ph. D Biologist, but if they've got that accent, the image kind of persists. And of course you might get a similar response if you take a Midwestern or Chicago accent to Mississippi. I don't think this is quite so bad anymore, in part because more people are exposed to different accents than their own, but I've seen it from time to time. Granted the accent spoken where I live tends to be a milder accent, and a lot of people around here could pass for midwesterners.

[mephnick]

Yeah there's lots of stigma over here too. As a Canadian I don't think I could do "Southern US" without immediately creating a "dumb redneck" stereotype at the table, which obviously isn't fair. I know Americans make fun of the "Canadian" accent (though this mainly exists in Eastern Canada, no one talks like that in BC). The only accent I can actually do reliably is Irish (for some strange reason), so I leave the accents behind and mostly focus on other ways to change my speech: Deeper/higher voices, stuttering, halting etc. I find doing bad accents is worse than doing no accents.

[Honest Tiefling]

I'm **** at them, utterly and completely. So when I DM, I just handwave and say that this character has a certain accent. Lazy? Probably.

I tend to dislike it when players do it, because I vaguely remember an incident where a player was trying to aim for a posh English accent, and everyone wondered what the heck accent they were going for. Unless you can pull it off, please, just...Stop.

I think it doesn't help that I cannot actually distinguish different accents of English speakers. I just can't.

[TheOOB]

A good accent can lend some character to your well....character, but if you're not good at it or inconsistent, it can make things worse. Do what you want, and if someone does something different than you don't get upset with them.

[veti]

I like accents. I try to make sure their relationship to stereotypes is either "way over the top" (the sneering Sandhurst villain, the Jewish pornbroker) or "completely counter-typical" (the Cockney god, the Maori tycoon, the Etonian taxi-driver). No-one seems to have been offended yet, although maybe they just suppress their resentment.

[Honest Tiefling]

Jewish pornbroker

...I'm pretty sure this is a typo, but I think I've got inspiration for my next modern setting NPC.

[ArcanaFire]

We have a guy in our group who always plays the same character, and no matter what world we're in, always has the same Australian accent. As much as we'd love to see him try to play a different character, his little tangents and mannerisms when he's in character have become a staple at the table and I think we'd miss it if he stopped.