Roleplaying dialogue styles

[RangerWickett]

When you game, how do people speak? Do you synopsize conversations, like, "I ask the bartender if he's heard anything about ninjas around here;" and "The bartender says something cryptic about the path of the lotus, then vanishes in a puff of smoke," or do you get fully into character, speaking as your character would speak?

Does your character talk like a fantasy character - "Lo, the tracks of the Fell Beast of Doom tell my Gnomish nose that the beast seeks a mate, sure as the heron seeks the sea bass."

or is it more like a real person - "Hey, wait a sec, guys. Do you see this staff? It says right here: Minister of Pain. Now, you're not gonna give the Minister of Pain any problems, are you? Good. Now get your ass outta here before I hit you with a horrid wilting, if you know what I mean."

I once had a classic Dwarf with a Scottish accent, and he talked fairly colloquially. There was an Elvish bard who was basically Antonio Banderas with bad poetic dialogue. I seldom go all Tolkien-ish, though. I think it sounds a little silly in fantasy fiction, and nigh ridiculous in real life.

In fantasy fiction, what style of writing do you prefer? Epic like Tolkien (in which case epic speech is permitted), heroic like the way Piratecat's storyhour is (occasionally epic at proper moments, often light and casual), or fully casual, something more like The Slayers anime series, or Wulf Ratbane's old storyhour?

Do you have any great speeches from your games? I can almost never pull it off, even when I DM, but one player of mine did on occasion whip up William Wallace-esque inspirational speeches before epic battles. He's a good player to have around. I tend to do better with beauty and poetry, and not as good with heroic speeches.

Share your opinions and experiences, please.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I'm pretty good at accents, and try to have my NPCs sound different from one another, not always successfully. I don't think I could manage the full on fantasy dialogue you mentioned with the sea bass and everything.

Good call on the dwarf BTW, all dwarves are Scotch.

 

[orchid blossom]

In our campaign if the conversation just needs to happen but isn't of great import, we'll go the "I ask the shopkeeper for a potion," route. If it's more important than that, we will talk in character. I usually start off saying "I say," just as a statement that I'm going into "in character" mode, then I speak as my character would.

My current character has a very formal way of speaking, she speaks casually only with close friends. I don't use any fantasy language, but I also avoid modern slang.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

I'm pretty good at accents, and try to have my NPCs sound different from one another, not always successfully. I don't think I could manage the full on fantasy dialogue you mentioned with the sea bass and everything.

Good call on the dwarf BTW, all dwarves are Scotch.

I think it's funny how dwarves seem to have Scottish accents nowadays, as opposed to the older German accents. Did this come about because of Warcraft?

 

[RangerWickett]

Actually, in my new campaign, Dwarves all have Russian accents, because of all the jokes like, "In Soviet Russia, my butt kicks you!"

Anyway.

 

[DragonLancer]

We just talk normally. The few times that we have tried to use accents or such, it hasn't really come across too well.

 

[The_lurkeR]

This is a good topic!
I've just recently (last year or so) been making efforts to "synopsize" conversations with NPC's as you called it. This has really been a great change when it comes to NPC interaction. Alot of the players who would have been hesitant to speak "in character", more freely join in the conversation and use their characters social skills.

There are of course still times that benefit from in character speaking, but giving the players the option to tell what their characters do, rather than speak the exact words eliminates alot of awkward pauses, and speeds up inconsequential RP encounters.

 

[Greylock]

I can tell what county/region/country a person is from by their accent, but I can't fake one to save my life. My role-playing goes like this:

Har! Dumb-bear kicked him in the head! That was out-of-character.

Hmmm. In character. Of course, sir. We are heroes. We will take this noble quest.

Har! Mark, Dakota my ass! I said that out-of-character. *snark*

To the walls!

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I'm pretty good at the fantasy-ish kind of dialogue without it getting silly. Some of the players in one of my games do have a tendency to get awfully modern in their speech.

Getting "fully into character" as you put it, is something I feel needs to be done depending on the situation. In the interest of keeping the game moving quickly, I'll gloss over certain opportunities for RP, leaving them for the major moments. I'll slip between the 3rd person and 1st person viewpoints pretty frequently in order to keep things clipping along at a nice pace.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

Generally all 3 get used during the game but I try to encourage the last 2.