D&D General Accents

[Voadam]

I remember when my son was little reading him The Hobbit and doing different voices for everybody, all 13 Dwarves, the three trolls, Gandalf, and Bilbo. The second night when I picked it up I could barely remember how I did Thorin and Bilbo let alone Bombur or Dwalin so that went pretty quick.

In my games I feel I should do it a little more for PCs, usually its my own voice channeling a thematic feeling (cautious, angry, reserved, etc.) but doing a western drawl and saying ma'am a lot was a ton of fun in an alt western game. With NPCs I sometimes channel a movie star as a hook so the Necromancer is Jack Nicholson, the shady creepy patron is Christopher Walken, the Asmodeus Bishop is Tom Cruise, and the broken madman was Robin Williams.

 

[GlassJaw]

Alright alright alright.

I don't get to play much (I usually the DM) but my favorite 5E character was a halfling barbarian who I played as a cross between Matt McConaughey from dazed & Confused (basically all of his movies) and Rhah from Platoon. He was absolutely fearless and stayed heavily medicated most of the time. Super fun to play.

 

[Orius]

I can't do accents even badly. I can't even tell apart non America English accents that well except maybe RP and Cockney, and I'm sure someone like Morrus would be highly unimpressed if I tried those.

I don't really think I can pull off different voices well either, the best I could probably do is slight tonal differences. But there was this gnome in my last campaign I did have a voice for and I did manage to maintain it consistently.

 

[rgoodbb]

Cockney, Cornish or posh English to a high degree

French, Russian, Spanish, Italian and Arabic to a low degree

I find it easier to do older voices rather than much younger ones

 

[Morrus]

I can't even tell apart non America English accents that well except maybe RP and Cockney

I'm not great at distinguishing accents either (which I suspect is part of why I'm not good at performing them).

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

These days, I'd much rather try to copy an actor's speech patterns (or rather, a character they've played) than a general real-world accent. I've used Jeff Goldblum, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Matt Berry, and Colman Domingo of late as models.

But generally, I just stick to altering tone, pitch, speaking patterns, language. I can do accents, in varying ranges of quality. But none really confidently enough that I would be comfortable using them in front of someone actually with that accent; so I am trying to move away from using them.

Matt McConaunghey

 

[TarionzCousin]

I played a character who sounded as close to Jason Statham as I could make him. Before every session I listened to clips of him talking and practiced.

It drove the DM crazy. He ended the campaign one or two sessions before the big climax. Was it because of my impression?

 

[jayoungr]

What accents can you/do you do in your games?

I do a lot of accents when playing NPCs, but for some reason, when I'm a player, I don't typically do an accent for my character, even if I'm playing someone who's "not from around here."