Good voices are good, bad voices are bad.
Having a voice for your character is very helpful, but not necessary. Always consider whether the voice is going to be annoying.
It's no different to naming your character. You can come up with a great name, or you can come up with a wacky name that's going to annoy everybody after the first 5 minutes.
I can't stand the high pitched voices, and often as not, males trying to sound female is just as bad. Other than that I don't generally have a problem with voices.
My current character really doesn't have anything to define his voice, so I play him in almost my own voice - it's basically my reading voice instead of my general talking voice. My previous character was a dragonborn, so I played him with a deep booming voice, talking from my chest.
I think it's more important to have personality for your character. Dragon magazine had a good article on this a while back (From the Outside In?) . It gave a lot of inspiration for how to come up with the nature and quirks of your character.
Taking my current character as an example; he's a bloodthirsty maniac, hunting monsters for sport, and collecting their teeth as trophies. Yet he has absolutely perfect table manners. He's got 8 intelligence, but he speaks clearly and precisely. The party is slowly discovering that he wasn't always insane, they're piecing together his history, although that's got nothing to do with the campaign.
I have him sing morbid songs, and he associates heavily with ravens (he worships the Raven Queen). But again, there's a twist, he worships the Raven Queen but he gets it all wrong. He's making the religion up as he goes along instead of following actual doctrine. And he's completely convinced that he's getting it right.
Quirks like these provide a lot of opportunity for role play. If you can think in character you're on a winner because you can just talk in character without having to plan what you're going to say. When one party member recently died and was raised, my character started hounding her about the afterlife - what was it like meeting the god of death? etc Because to him, that's what would happen when you die - the queen comes to collect you. The fact this didn't happen gave us a lot to role play with.
It pays to think your choices through a little bit though - one character in that game is an atheist. Atheism doesn't sit well with me in a story where gods are so obviously present. Somehow it just doesn't make sense.
Having a voice for your character is very helpful, but not necessary. Always consider whether the voice is going to be annoying.
It's no different to naming your character. You can come up with a great name, or you can come up with a wacky name that's going to annoy everybody after the first 5 minutes.
I can't stand the high pitched voices, and often as not, males trying to sound female is just as bad. Other than that I don't generally have a problem with voices.
My current character really doesn't have anything to define his voice, so I play him in almost my own voice - it's basically my reading voice instead of my general talking voice. My previous character was a dragonborn, so I played him with a deep booming voice, talking from my chest.
I think it's more important to have personality for your character. Dragon magazine had a good article on this a while back (From the Outside In?) . It gave a lot of inspiration for how to come up with the nature and quirks of your character.
Taking my current character as an example; he's a bloodthirsty maniac, hunting monsters for sport, and collecting their teeth as trophies. Yet he has absolutely perfect table manners. He's got 8 intelligence, but he speaks clearly and precisely. The party is slowly discovering that he wasn't always insane, they're piecing together his history, although that's got nothing to do with the campaign.
I have him sing morbid songs, and he associates heavily with ravens (he worships the Raven Queen). But again, there's a twist, he worships the Raven Queen but he gets it all wrong. He's making the religion up as he goes along instead of following actual doctrine. And he's completely convinced that he's getting it right.
Quirks like these provide a lot of opportunity for role play. If you can think in character you're on a winner because you can just talk in character without having to plan what you're going to say. When one party member recently died and was raised, my character started hounding her about the afterlife - what was it like meeting the god of death? etc Because to him, that's what would happen when you die - the queen comes to collect you. The fact this didn't happen gave us a lot to role play with.
It pays to think your choices through a little bit though - one character in that game is an atheist. Atheism doesn't sit well with me in a story where gods are so obviously present. Somehow it just doesn't make sense.
