Do you use NPC "voices"?

[drnuncheon]

All the time, with mixed success. The Marquis was pretty successful, based entirely on Hugh Laurie's Prince George from Blackadder. Antoine the chef's accent, on the other hand, raced around Europe like a crazed Mongol, much to the amusement of my players.

 

[Wombat]

why is it that most always make their drawves scottish?

I dunno -- most of my dwarves sound Scandinavian -- Norwegian, Swedish, or Danish, with a slipover into Icelandic...

 

[sir_ollibolli]

I always try to use different speech patterns, melodies and voices... but the hardest stunt for me was the interaction with the group as a mute NPC... relying only on gestures, facial expressions and only in case of real problems the written word... (something like Buffy in the mute episode...with the boards...)

 

[SpiralBound]

Good question. I certainly don't. Last time I ran D&D with an accent, I made my dwarves sound more Russian.

In one of my campaign setting, I had three main groups of Dwarves, each of whom had a distinctive accent. The players quickly learned to pay attention to what accent was used for a Dwarf as they had quite different relations to other races and cultures. In this setting, the Dwarves had migrated into the area from "elsewhere" a very long time ago and were gradually migrating from West to East.

The oldest and original group were of the "Dybendahl Tor", living in an ernormous mountain that was isolated in the middle of heavily wooded foothills. This group was decidedly traditional and conformist to the point of being culturally xenophobic and judgemental of others, even the other Dwarven cultures. These were the guys who were very clan-oriented and could recite their clan lineages. I had them speak in a stern and cold "pseudo-Russian" accent using a slight middle-english sentence structure.

The middle-aged second group were from the "Skjölsvold Firmament" in a large mountain range bordering an inland salt-water sea. These guys were traditional and arranged in clans, but they were tolerant of other cultures and open to trading with other cultures (on their terms though). For this culture I used a badly generic Scandinavian accent spoken with a politely reserved, slightly formal sentence structure.

The youngest (relatively speaking) and most Easterly group were the Dwarves from "Morian's Geld" who lived in a low-lying mountain and hill range that ran parallel to the Skjölsvold mountain range on the other side of a narrow valley. This was practically a cosmopolitian culture of easygoing fun-loving people with a joking and self-effacing demeanor. They actively seeked interaction with other races and cultures and they had an extended family structure with many children (although being Dwarven the age differences between siblings was rather great). The Morian's Dwarves spoke with an Irish accent using short sentences punctuated with funny expressions or dry sarcasisms.

So, as you can see it became very important to the players to recognise which cultural Dwarf they were speaking to when presented with a Dwarven npc!

 

[Duncan Haldane]

I try to do some type of distinctive voice, especially if there is more than one NPC present at a time, but wouldn't be confident of carrying that same voice from one session to the next.

I DM a lot of Living Greyhawk, which makes it more difficult, as an NPC could be DMed by different people for the same players. I at least try to understand the motivations and attitudes of the NPCs so that I can adopt that in my portrayal of the NPC.

Recently I ran a game (twice) which had a middle-aged male human mage described as slim, well dressed, with a well-trimmed goatee and clean, well-kept nails. He lived in an extravagant home, and the description made comment of him drinking tea in a slow, almost delicate fashion.

The module also mentioned that if one was to do an accent for him it should be upper-class british.

Upon reading that description I decided to take it one step further, giving him a lisp and an effeminate nature (eg, deliberate pause when talking about his "friend").

As an openly gay man myself (with not lisp and not noticably effeminate), I wasn't worried the players (all who I know reasonably well anyway) would be offended, and in fact it brought some light humour to the scene, which was fine.

But back to the original question. Does anyone know of any particular methods allowing one to write down a style of voice to be referred to later? I could write down accent, etc, but just wondering if there is something more official, maybe something a voice actor might use.

Thanks,

Duncan

 

[Driddle]

I hear voices. Does that count?

 

[Driddle]

... Does anyone know of any particular methods allowing one to write down a style of voice to be referred to later? I could write down accent, etc, but just wondering if there is something more official, maybe something a voice actor might use.

Not *exactly* the experience you're seeking, but it might be close enough to apply: colored text highlighters.

Pick a color that makes some sort of connection (for you) to a personality. Pink could be a feminine speech pattern, for example, or yellow for an anxious fraidy-cat. Blue is a cool color so maybe the speaker has a laid-back attitude. ... That sort of thing.

It's helped me keep track of NPCs that I intended to make key players through a campaign.

 

[qstor]

Sometimes I do differnt voices like my fake French accent or fake US New England accent pretending I'm JKF. I'm running RPGA Eberron next week and there's an elderly woman in the mod and I'm going to use my high "little old lady" voice in that mod. I used the New England accent for a gnome innkeeper in an Forgotten Realms adventure I ran a few years ago so now I used it for gnome innkeepers elsewhere cause it brings back good memories from the past game.
Sometimes I use Irish accents too. I ran Dark Conspiracy for a while and the adventure was in Lousiana and my players got a kick of me pretending I was that Cajun chef with red suspenders on TV

Mike