Players not speaking in character

[Kemrain]

I love my group. Everyone speaks in character, in voice. We're a small (read: 3 people) group of close friends who don't get embarrassed by eachother easily, so we can do that. My GM is especially good about this (even though he SUCKS at voices by his reconing), to the point where he can have 3 female NPC's talking with the group at once, and we can tell which one is talking at any given time. Sometimes he screws up, but that's ok.
I have seperate voices for my different characters, and even a few for one of them. It's pretty easy, and when I mess up, no one complains. It's really a good atmosphere that allows us to do this. Even the other player gets into it, though he was exceptionally hesitant at first. Playing a female character, he raises his voice half an octave and speaks differently, and we always know what's IC and what's OOC.
We've been playing this way for so long, I'd startedto forget that all groups don't work this way.

- Kemrain the Amature Voice Actor.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

No one I play with cares.

That said, most of us do speak differently in character: usually not through a silly voice or an accent, but more in the choice of vocabulary or the pitch of the voice or the facial expressions used when speaking. But it's not a requirement, and no one complains or feels irritated if someone doesn't do that for their character.

Partly this is because it's not actually all that difficult for us to tell when someone is speaking in character. If they're saying more than a few sentences, we have enough context to figure out whether it's IC or OOC, and if they're only saying one very brief thing, they generally start off with "I say:" (or "{character name} says:"). No mysteries there.

We also have a general rule that if someone attempts to do an accent, no one can make fun of it. Considering how bad most of us are at accents, that was kind of essential. But it's not like anyone wants to try to maintain an in-character accent for an entire game, so this rule is mostly for one-off games and NPCs, and even with the latter the GM usually begs off on doing the accent if the NPC is going to have to say something long or complicated.


I think if anyone ever tried to institute an "anything you say, your character says" rule in our group, there'd be an open revolt. A certain amount of out-of-character joking and crosstalk is fine with us, because we're all friends who enjoy each other's company and who don't mind being asked to shut up if it's genuinely interfering with the game. We're all there to have fun and hang out together, after all.

--
besides, that kind of rule is a little too control-freaky for my tastes
ryan

this fine gentleman pretty much summed up what i was going to type.

 

[Desdichado]

And?

I guess it's the use of +2, since that's a metagaming tag, not an IC tag. Still, it's not a particularly egregious example, since besides that, the line could be said in character and work just fine.

Personally, I'm not particularly fond of accents except in a few cases, and I only deliver about half my "lines" in character anyway. It doesn't seem like something to get worked up over either way.

 

[apesamongus]

I guess it's the use of +2, since that's a metagaming tag, not an IC tag.

But it wasn't a question asked by one character of another, it was a question asked of one player of another. Compare to "Are you still wearing that blue tunic?" or "I forget, in that last town, did we remember to return the prison key to the guard we bribed?" It's not a case of a character getting free telepathy by using player communication, it's a case of a player using convenient player-to-player communication to get character level information he should already have. I mean, it's not like +2 frost longswords appear and disappear willy-nilly from characters' inventories without anyone noticing.

Something like, "Hey, do you still have that wand you pickpocketed off me in the last town, or did you sell it when we were separated," would be metagaming, but that wasn't the example given.

Further, even with my pickpocketed wand example, there is a question of whether it's exploitive metagaming or not.

 

[bolie]

My group has a mix of what I call "actors" and "describers". Some really hate to act out what their character does and prefer to describe it in the third person. Others love to act out their character. I usually do a mix. I see no reason to try to force someone to be uncomfortable and do it one way or the other. Better to come up with a signal or sign to indicate IC or OC speech.

As far as +2 swords and 10th level wizards go, there would be some way for characters to refer to these things as they have real, measurable effects in the game world. A 10th level wizard can cast spells that an 8th level wizard can't and can't cast spells that an 11th level wizard can.

Rather than try to come up with "in game" words for all these things, it's much easier and simpler to let characters use the terms we us.

Bolie IV

 

[Blue_Kryptonite]

Its never been a problem for us. Our group generally spends 12-18 hours together, around the table, every couple of weeks. We're friends, our kids call the other non-related adults "Aunt" and "uncle" in many cases (and their kids call us that), and the game is there, and flows, and about 4-6 hours play gets done in the 12-18, frequently interrupted by anything from casual conversation to video game breaks to store runs to... anything, really. We're just there to spend time with each other, and the game flows in and out of all of it.

It also helps that my game is structured like a television series, with scenes, acts, episodes, and seasons. In the middle of it all, we're all co-writing and acting the adventure, and at the end of the scene, looking back on how the script was written and how cool the episode was.

 

[Desdichado]

But it wasn't a question asked by one character of another, it was a question asked of one player of another. Compare to "Are you still wearing that blue tunic?" or "I forget, in that last town, did we remember to return the prison key to the guard we bribed?" It's not a case of a character getting free telepathy by using player communication, it's a case of a player using convenient player-to-player communication to get character level information he should already have. I mean, it's not like +2 frost longswords appear and disappear willy-nilly from characters' inventories without anyone noticing.

That depends on context, though. Discussing tactics (like whether or not to use a certain weapon to gain sneak attack damage bonus) in combat would probably metagaming, even though technically not impossible.

 

[dead]

Yes, I think the new guy's Scottish accent will die soon. He actually was caught out NOT using it once during the first session while supposedly speaking IC.

Also, you're all right about the jokes made by other players about another's accent. I found that during the first session: the other players would all start to speak in a Scottish accent ALSO!!!

They did this in jest, but it was bloody annoying! He created mood with his accent, but they killed it with hilarity.

To tell you the truth, I actually suggested this new player take on an accent before he entered our group. Why? Well, his background story was that he was from another world. Not another nation or continent, but another world! So I just said, you might want to speak in an accent to symbolise that you're a foreigner from a back-water dimension.

 

[Psychic Warrior]

Ah! Scottish Accents! I'm having flashbacks to another Scottish accented character.

One of the most annoying person I have ever played with used a Scottish accent for his dwarven wizard. His obnoxious, violent, semi-derranged dwarven wizard. Never have I been happier to lose a character in a game because it caused the death of that character as well. The guy took it personally and left the group (note I didn't kill him, nor did anyone else in the party - he was killed by an underwater water elemental that the party couldn't damage due to a combination of DR an a 50% miss chance imposed on us; the party fled leaving my character and his dead behind them).

Personally I don't really care for players using accents and we have a relaxed attitude towards IC/OOC comments. It's what we like and our games run pretty smoothly.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Are accents the only way to show you're speaking in character?

You can also wear a special hat.