Roleplaying accents?

[cmrscorpio]

If I'm not talking in a completely different voice (I do a pretty spot-on Warcraft orc), I am usually talking in an artificial accent.

I use alot of cockney for Sigilians when I play Planescape. Accents I use are Kentuckian, Alabaman, Minnesotan, Michigan, Bostonian, Canadian, "proper" English, "unaccented" American (like what most news anchors use), French, a generic Spanish/Mexican, German, Russian, Chinese, Rastafarian, South African, (Asian) Indian

I've had the luck of having been around a variety of accents despite the fact that I've lived in southeastern Ohio all my life.

 

[krissbeth]

I don't do accents but I do try to pay attention to the voices. My rogue has kind of a higher pitched, fast talking girly voice whereas my druid is lower and more deliberate.

There was an accent incident over the weekend where the DM randomly started voicing my character's brother like, "You ged ovah heah and cu-ah my sistuh!"

Me (OOC, of course): "My brother's from Southie now?"

 

[mhacdebhandia]

It's rare. We've had some hilarious times when characters in modern games have impersonated people from other cultures - there are some dreadful attempts at Russian accents to be found in the past of some of my friends.

My own Russian accent isn't so bad, and I used it once for an orc character in the Forgotten Realms for the hell of it.

I generally like changing the way I speak rather than my accent, but I really should try creating unique voices for my characters. Well, either "unique" or "my bad impression of Christopher Walken", either way. It's all good.

 

[Thunderfoot]

Da, Ja, Ah-so!
The three current reigning accents in my campaign world.
I try to always speak IC using the correct voice whether I play or DM. I find it odd when people don't, not wrong mind you, just odd; it is role playing after all.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

I tend to do cheesy British accents for the most part. But yeah, if you don't do an accent, whats the point? I also try to talk using "thou art" etc...

imho voices are a must for any dm, and highly recommended to player.

just as a question, what accents do people if they don't have an American English accent?

 

[Baron Opal]

I would like to, but I usually mangle the accent pretty throughly. I have a great German accent, but after a couple of sentences it becomes Russian. Which is wierd, because I can speak German but I don't know any Russian.

Hmm. Maybe my German has a Russian accent...

 

[Li Shenron]

Do you use different voices or accents when playing PCs or NPCs?

I almost never don't. It could be useful for an NPC, it may help the players remember him/her later, particularly when you have several plots going on at the same time. But I recommend not to use accents or strong voice interpretation for PCs who the players are supposed to be playing for months and months, because almost every time an accent is funny the 1st day, fine for a couple of more sessions, and then it annoys everyone. NPC don't last that long, or at least are not there full-time all sessions...

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Sometimes (like when the character is from far away), I do use a different language - speaking High German instead of the local language. Since I can't keep that up very long, I often fall back into normal language.

Sometimes, not always, when I DM, I use different speech patterns, and often include using High German, to distinguish NPTs.

Since the speaker of one German dialect often considers other German dialects funny/silly, we don't use those. It would not make the NPT distinguished, but would reduce him to a comedy stunt.

I remember the German version of BG1, where one voice-set you could choose for your character was this awful Saxon atrocity.

I have a great German accent

I don't like those overdone accents you often see in movies. (Probably because I'm German, I'm sure many French don't like hearing English with a Cheesy French accent) The only thing worse for me than an (often American) actor trying to speak English in a German accent (or worse yet, to speak German and utterly failing) is a German trying to speak English and failing at that. Whenever I hear "se" (the) or "sis" (this), I wince.

 

[Aeric]

I may do different voices for characters, but I usually shy away from accents. As a DM, at least. The one exception to this was in a game where the elves ran an aggressive, expansionistic empire. When speaking Common, the elves had a British accent. When speaking Elvish, they had an American accent (which to us was no accent at all). I don't know if it made a difference to my players, but I was proud of the idea.

 

[Jhaelen]

And here's a third one.
Do you use different voices or accents when playing PCs or NPCs?

Not for every NPC. But I'm fond of using different voices and even behaving/moving in odd ways for important npcs. My players seem to enjoy it immensly, it really makes for more memorable characters.