Accents at the table?

[SnowleopardVK]

I'm awful at accents. Halfway through sentences I forget how to do the accent I'm doing, and then I panic and my players will realize I've forgotten how to do the accent. And then one of my players will try to take over the NPC's dialogue without knowing what the NPC is going to say, so he'll try to guess what was going to be said next.

Hillarity generally ensues, but a lot of stuff has to get retconned when I try to do accents.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I do subtle differences in voice to indicate different characters, but I prefer to keep the game as 3rd person as possible. I want each player to think of themselves as a DM controlling only one NPC, not to personally identify with their character.

 

[Ringlerun]

I do accents all the time. Mainly for NPC's when im DMing

My 4'10 elf wizard with the Arnold Schwarzenegger accent was hilarious.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Today, 02:39 AM #11 (permalink)
ChiltonDom
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[UselessTriviaMan]

I love doing accents and/or changing my voice tone when GMing. In fact I highly recommend it, especially when you want your NPCs to stand out memorably. I've had a lot of success by assigning celebrities or movie/TV characters to my NPCs.

Examples:

Peter Venkman
Charlie Sheen
Beetlejuice
Christina Ricci
Alan Rickman
Hannibal Lecter
Jeff Spiccoli
Agent Smith
Gandalf
The Mouth of Sauron
Teddy KGB
Fletch
Hudson Hawk
Will Smith
Mrs. Doubtfire

I'm not saying I do these voices well - I just use them as the basis for an NPC's personality or speech patterns. It helps me stay in character more easily.

By far the single most memorable was the unfortunate assistant-evil-priest who talked and acted just like Napoleon Dynamite. The barbarian PC's player hated that film, and took out some of his frustrations on the hapless fellow...

 

[Nellisir]

I do accents on occasion. My svirfneblin cleric/magic-user, Asilud Sunnilda Gelud-Diedelindadottur, was Swiss (or German).