Question /tg/, how often do your players and DMs do voices to indicate when they're speaking in character?
How hard do they try? Does each player have a clear personality behind their voice, or is it just the standard "slight British accent" thing I hear so often?
I'm very curious. Also feel free to post stories about people doing a very good/crappy job at their voices.
Character voice thread I suppose
>>46244045
I'll start with an example from my group. We have one player who does amazing voices, and many of them sound completely different. We often joke that he should pursue voice acting.
>Surly Knight character= A gruff yet slightly posh accent as well as intense amounts of eye contact
>Weird Arab themed thief/rogue= sleazy sounding middle eastern accent with lots of chuckling to himself and wordplay
>Hyper-cliche, Gandalf esque wizard = really good old man voice, as well as trailing off mid conversation to talk about shit he remembers from when he was young
>As a DM
I try to always voice the characters. I'm not terribly good at accents but it gets the job done. Major problem is finding different accents for different people in a region.
One of my last sessions was based in Oklahoma. The group met maybe 4 or 5 male adult NPC's and I struggled to find variation in them.
>As a character
My current character in one my games is an Australian, and I don't even bother with him. If I don't do an accent as a player I'll try to at least have the tone down according to the characters personality.
Some say "my character says x, y, z." Some speak normally. Some make a token effort at a broken accent. Some break into full voice acting, complete with fantasy-racial mannerisms and such.
I try to give all of my characters a unique feel to them, voice and sayings is the best way to do that. Right now I'm playing an Imperial Nazi Arch Militant with Hatred of Mutants who is my best attempt to imitate Hans Landa. I played a Minotaur with a deep southern accent in Shadowrun, who called everyone 'Beef Jerky', but was immediately offended when white humans said it, in addition to being offended by steak houses, leather, cow print, etc.
It's hard to come up with those accents and characterizations on the fly while DMing, though. A lot of unplanned NPCs end up extremely generic or over-the-top racist.
My group is somewhere inthe middle. The DM is great and varied, cleric is british accent, 2 fighters are clearly dictating different voices from their own but arent crazy different...and im trying my best to be a gnome.
One thing the dm said to me when i met him that stuck with me, was along the lines of 'can you retain your characters point of view in the midst of action' or something all in an over the top voice. My sides were gone, but ive tried to live that sentiment
>>46244045
I voice characters when I DM and my players sometimes do.
In our engine heart game, the one player is a wheeled boombox with a 70s jive turkey radio DJ personality, so he does that.
On the other hand, another player is essentially playing himself but a robot, so, eh. No voice necessary.
Our DM is really good at making personalities for his on the fly NPCs, but he isn't great at voices or accents, so some sound kind of similar. He's been making a conscious effort to remedy this and uses more voices nowadays. He has one voice he's really good at, which he applies to what I can only refer to as NPCs who think way too highly of themselves. Sounds like a stressed out, yet super smug British gay man.
>>46244045
As a DM I do funny voices occasionally. I think the zenith of my voices was my Dark Heresy campaign.
>Inquisitor Soldevan- A deep growling voice with a posh accentthat I may or may not have ripped off from DKR Bane.
Inquisitor Globus Varaak- A deep booming voice with less of an accident and a slight rasp to reflect his ruined body.
Inquisitor Silas Marr- A rasping and unpleasant voice which seems to carry with it an eternal sinister sneer. It is occasionally interrupted by a deathly hacking cough which I acted so convincingly that my players stopped the game to ask if I was okay.
>>46244045
As a DM I try almost to voice almost everything except young women/girls.
My voice is too deep for me to do anything but embarrass myself.
My players over the years have run the gamut, but most just go with their regular speaking voice but a different style of speaking to suit their character.
>>46246211
>except young women/girls
If you want to hit higher pitches, sit on your nuts and lean forward when you voice them.
It works and it's less noticeable than the old grip-and-squeeze method.
>>46246211
>except young women/girls
I can't into these either. I just end up talking in a really unconvincing and embarrassing falsetto.
>>46244045
As both a player and a DM, I'm a Mimick with a 4 octave vocal range. My voice can do High-base, full barritone, full Tenor, and then skips to low contralto. Which means I can speak in a deep bass tone, and do a limited number of female voices. My normal speaking voice is a low baritone, so it can be pretty fun to shift almost instantly from speaking in a manly as fuck voice for out of character, into the voice of a swedish woman.
But with that range, I mimick things. I can do mimickry of a huge variety of characters, and can do virtually any accent.
To date, here's some of my favorites
> Bass tone Russian monk
> Swedish Female Fighter
> Sean Connery voiced James Bond Rogue
> An Igor, complete with a lisp
>>46244045
I just usually have them using different wording and more or less slang dependent on the type of character, I generally don't bother with doing a bad English accent or whatever.
