silly voices and accents

[Zappo]

Sometimes. I feel that the best way is not going overboard with it; people can and do perceive surprisingly small differences in intonation, and big changes tend to become silly rather quickly because I'm not good enough to do a radically different voice. Also, you have many more features to work with than just pitch and accent; when I want to give an NPC a unique voice, I also slightly change my posture and body language. The longer the speech, the smaller you can make your changes, but most people can sense rather fine details in just a few minutes.

 

[sniffles]

Most of the GMs I play with don't do accents because they think they're not any good at it, although I suspect they're better than they think. One GM tends to lower his voice and speak more gruffly for some characters, which can be effective, but for the most part people use variations of speech patterns rather than accents to differentiate characters and NPCs.

I just spent all day yesterday doing a silly French accent for my halfling swashbuckler, but it was a one-shot game. I don't think I'd want to do that on a continuing basis.

 

[punkorange]

Most of the GMs I play with don't do accents because they think they're not any good at it

I've found that most people who DM and feel they aren't good at it just don't give themselves enough credit. Compliment them

 

[Eli-kun]

I don't think I've tried accents yet. I might change manners of speaking for different characters. My dwarven fighter doesn't talk very much and when she does she is extremely blunt. My half orc barbarian is still a child so his voice is slightly higher pitched than my own. He also uses terms like "lady" for any adult female and "grown up".

 

[Wombat]

I try to come up with distinctive speaking styles for all my major NPCs (and several of the minor ones) -- combination of accents, word choice, speed of delivery, volume, etc. Actually this is one of the strong points of my GMing -- people in my games always know exactly who they are talking to.

I have a friend who has joined a video game company -- he wants me to apply to them as a voice actor...

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Oh gods yes! That is about a third of the fun of DMing. And it makes it easier to remember the NPCs attitudes. I first started by assigning an 'actor' to an NPC, then immitating the actor. So Jack Nicholson was the captain of a Federation starship, Sean Connery was a retired British Expeditionary Force Colonel, Peter Lore was a corrupt shop clerk, Mogran Freeman was a burned out old cop, etc. Now I just make notes about the voice, but no longer assign actors.

The Auld Grump

 

[Exquisite Dead Guy]

I was asked not to have the PCs face anymore were-baboons. It seems my war cries of "Oooh, oooh" were just too much.

 

[demiurge1138]

I do use voices for NPCs. Not all of them, though, just big players. For example, the shopkeeper might not have anything specific, but Xanxost the Slaad definitely gets his own voice (it's somewhere between Jabba the Hutt and Mortos der Soulstealer, if you were curious). Also, different NPCs get different word choices and grammer, depending on what's appropriate. And I use body language as much as word choice to differentiate NPCs.

As a PC, I don't have a "voice", but I do use certain favorite words and catchphrases to differentiate between them.

Demiurge out.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Imagine this: you're gaming with a group that has never done voices, but you like to. You're a guy playing a female character. Now imagine the look of horror on all the other male players when you do the voice of the character. This happened to me about a year and a half ago when I played in my CA friends' adventure. Three males and one female consist of the roleplayers. I introduce my character - and my best friend looks like he failed his sanity check after gazing upon Cthulhu.

 

[GlassJaw]

I was asked not to have the PCs face anymore were-baboons. It seems my war cries of "Oooh, oooh" were just too much.

Tongue-Eater?!?!

I just had him snarl and growl a lot - "ooh, ooh, oohing" didn't really fit with the feral template I threw on him.