Do you use "voice acting" when you play?

[Umbran]

This is a question for both DMs and players. How do you use voices when roleplaying? Do you consider yourself a full blown voice actor, with distinctly different voices for each character? Do you just use your regular voice? Something in between? If you use your normal voice, how do you communicate when you are talking in-character or out-of-character?

I do a certain amount of voice acting, both when I play and when I GM. As you note, it is good to differentiate between when the character is speaking, and when the player is. It's also kind of fun, even if my vocal stylings aren't professional-quality.

Just this summer, I was in a weekend-long live action game, in which I kept up a bad Russian accent. Because:
1) I don't know accents well enough to do a good Russian accent.
2) The character wasn't actually Russian, so it was reasonable that his accent wouldn't be great, and I could denote when he'd dropped the facade by dropping the accent.

 

[MGibster]

Nope. For me, role-playing is not about amateur dramatics. Unwelcome take I expect. It was funny when we were teens and 20's but the older I get the more I find it irritating at the gaming table. Sometimes the people I play with might do so session 0 or 1 to showcase that their dwarf speaks with a Scottish accent or their goblin has a squeaky voice, but once the game starts it's done.

I tend to use it sparingly. Sometimes it's not even a voice it's more about word choice, volume, mannerisms, emotion, or even cadence. i.e. An NPC who got stabbed in the belly might speak to the PCs through gritted teeth.

Yeah I love it. I usually pick an actor or media character as a base and then key off that like @MGibster ’s Christopher Walken example. The lawyer in a recent game was channelling Michael Gambon.

I had a baron in my Greyhawk campaign I modeled off of Brian Blessed. He was a little depressed about not having the time to squash the heads of gnolls on account of being too busy running his barony.

 

[Retros_x]

For PCs yes, for NPCs only in a much more restrained way because if I can't remember and distinguish all the different NPCs voices. But I approach it really more from a emotional character perspective and less from a mechanical perspective. So I am not thinking "I give this character a higher pitched, nasal voice" but I am thinking "I speak like an arrogant nobleman who never saw real danger" and that then might come out as a high-pitched nasal voice, but maybe also different. Character first, also because I need to make decisions from that characters perspective too, so I can do it both with one focus in mind. Having to think about the "mechanical" aspects directly would be to much multi-tasking for me.

 

[zarionofarabel]

Even in person at the table, if you're seated, it's possible to incorporate just the tiny amount of body movement to signal things. You can sit erect, more towards the edge of your chair. You might slouch. Lean in slightly when the character wants to impart something secretive or important. Point a finger at someone when addressing them. Wave. Throw your hands up like one does when you don't get something, are in despair or exasperated (the same motion, but they all look different.)

Yeah this, totally this, this is great advice as to small things that one can do that really make a difference! One of the things I noticed when watching AP as most are done over like...zoom...or whatever...seem to lack this as people are facing a screen instead of each other. I think I would miss having this "body language" aspect if I were to play online. Then again I guess there would be the aspect that I could DM other participants, or perhaps send images directly to their screens. I'm not familiar with much "technomological" things so I don't really know how all that works. So perhaps gaining the tech bonus might make up for the body language penalty.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The character wasn't actually Russian, so it was reasonable that his accent wouldn't be great, and I could denote when he'd dropped the facade by dropping the accent.

Recently saw this done in an episode of Grantchester. A character who was actually British had adopted a foreign accent to seem more exotic. The accent got dropped in the interrogation room.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

Yeah this, totally this, this is great advice as to small things that one can do that really make a difference! One of the things I noticed when watching AP as most are done over like...zoom...or whatever...seem to lack this as people are facing a screen instead of each other. I think I would miss having this "body language" aspect if I were to play online. Then again I guess there would be the aspect that I could DM other participants, or perhaps send images directly to their screens. I'm not familiar with much "technomological" things so I don't really know how all that works. So perhaps gaining the tech bonus might make up for the body language penalty.

I only game/forever GM via Foundry, and we use Discord for sound and video. And I’m very active in front of the camera taking on roles. It’s fun - not great acting - and seem to engage the players. Like, everyone knows that gnomes speak with an Italian accent right? How could I do that without using my body and hands.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Funny enough, as a player in a current campaign, I'm playing an old dwarf, and without realizing it, I was speaking like Ron Swanson. Which the other players immediately recognized. So now I'm basically playing a dwarven wizard Ron Swanson

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

At one point, I contemplated “doing voices” for AI/robotic/cybernetic/power armor etc. PCs & NPCs using some tech I had on hand from my guitar-playing hobby.

Namely, I have:

A TEAC microphone from the 1970s
A Korg Pandora Px4 or Px5 portable digital modeler
A battery operated desktop-sized Orange Amp

Pandoras are loaded with all kinds of guitar effects and a few amps, so I could have given my voice all kinds of unearthly sounds. Ring Modulation would have been very trippy, but Echo, Reverb, Tremolo or Rotary effects would have also been very appropriate. Especially since every one had parameters you could adjust.

But unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to do that.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yes, of course!

I am not a professional, I think some acting is essential part of how I like roleplaying games to be played. Most of my voices are not particularly elaborate, but I try to vary my normal speech at least a little bit to be evocative of what sort of person I am trying to portray. And this of course goes for vocabulary and other aspects of the speech as well. Sometimes I do more elaborate voices, for characters I know I do not need to portray for long. Squeaky goblin voice might be fun for a short interaction, but it might become exhausting to both to do and to listen were I to play such a character for a long campaign.

And I'd also like to say that this is a skill like any other, and you can improve it. And no one expects you to be a professional actor. But I hope people are not avoiding even attempting it because they're afraid that they would not be good at it, or worse, because they were afraid of ridicule.