Do you use them as a GM?
Do you use them as a player?
If not, do you wish you did?
If so, how many voices do you have?
Yes, totally. Optimally, one voice per PC/NPC.
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Yes, totally. Optimally, one voice per PC/NPC.
This is why I wish I could game with Kirth in real life!
I'm the same way - I usually think ahead of time about the character, background, and region. If I'm winging an NPC I'll just worry about region and sometimes the voice helps create the background later.
Case in point, in Kingmaker I decided to give all the the citizens of Restov vaguely Russian accents, with decidedly thicker accents and coarser speech for the commoners such as Oleg. I also played up Oleg's friendly grumpiness, banter with his wife, and disillusionment with politics. The party had some memorable conversations with him.
And yes, all dwarves are a little bit Scottish! ;)
As a player I tend not to as much, only because if it is outlandish it can be a little grating over the course of a career. But I usually do something subtle such as grammatical choices, a slight lisp, or favorite words.
I'm horrible at voices.
This explains why all your characters are the "strong, silent" type.
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I have a few I prefer using diffrent accents depending on the type of people they are talking to, or if i want to make a character or place sound unique.
if it's a regional accent, I change pitch and octive per NPC.
russian/slavic somes up often for barbarians/orcs/lizardmen
a number of british and italian accents for normal humans.
dwarves usually come across as nordic/germanic
elves have a high class accent, changed by race usually
I have more but those are the main ones
I have done it a few times. When I did my players tended to like it. But I always felt silly.
I really tried with my cajun voodoo witch, but I just couldn't make it sound right....
But you know, I'm going to try again. I want him to sound like Justin Wilson... I guess I can download some Justin Wilson routines on iTunes...
Everytime I do it as Gm my gm says I sound stupid so I stopped doing it.
I totally do different voices for NPCs. It depends on the character. Like squeaky gnomes with a heavy Bronx accent; haughty elves with a breathy, disdainful British or Boston Brahmin accent; raspy cackling witches; low, grumbling hillbilly Ogres with bad diction; etc. I usually pull it off, but recently, I played a Varisian fortune-teller with a vaguely eastern European accent.
After the encounter, one of the players asked me if she was supposed to be Russian, Irish, or Jamaican, because my accent kind of wandered about. I managed to keep a straight face and said, "Varisian. I totally made up a distinct nonexistent accent for her, like Marina Sirtis did for Counsellor Troi in Star Trek!"
They didn't buy it, but they sure laughed.
Tried it once, Was promptly glared at by the entire group and asked to never do it again. Apparently my voice acting skills are lacking.
I am terrible at voices, can anyone point me at resources that help you develop and improve them?
I use them consistently as a GM, I have around 20 or so voices I use.
I have a handful, mostly stereotypes. There's 'the cranky old man' (who generally defaults to "Crazy Eye"). There's the Irish accent I use for the occasional shopkeep/barkeep/street performer/neer-do-well, the Scotch accent for tough guys, and sometimes I throw in a Russian/German accent just to have something different. Oddly enough, I've just realized that every brigand, thief, bandit or what-have-you that my players have ever interrogated has had a thick British accent, possibly Cockney, if I understand what that one is correctly.
Mind you, I don't get any special responses from these voices except the occasional "Are you related to _______?" because the voices are the same just about every time.
As a GM, I use voices and accents constantly. I draw on characters from movies and TV to match NPC's in the game. (Everyone from General Zod to Fat Bastard to The Man with No Name to BBC newscasters has made an appearance.) I start planning voices as I read the AP's and I keep track with notes on my NPC sheets.
My players appreciate it as it helps with the roleplaying and can make for some memorable villains and supporting cast.
I've often maintained that table-top dnd is an actor's game - whilst pbp is a writer's game. As such, I don't really play tabletop; I'm a terrible actor. However, I do vast quantities of research into languages and vernacular, and have amassed several folders and bookmarks concerning such, to incorporate into my writing. My favorite, I think, to date, was a northern woman styled after Tina Nordstrom, from New Scandanavian Cooking.
As a GM, I use voices and accents constantly. I draw on characters from movies and TV to match NPC's in the game. (Everyone from General Zod to Fat Bastard to The Man with No Name to BBC newscasters has made an appearance.) I start planning voices as I read the AP's and I keep track with notes on my NPC sheets.
My players appreciate it as it helps with the roleplaying and can make for some memorable villains and supporting cast.
I do the same thing. The one real loss I've felt throughout the APs? The fade out of long, box-text speeches. I used to recite them in voices to find the perfect fit.
I use a lot of different voices-- some are good and some I just make my PCs suffer through some, especially an NPC in my Scion: Hero game who is from Jamaica.
Voices are fun. For anyone wanting to try to do them, just... talk to yourself. Or to your dogs. Change your pitch and intonation and stuff like that, and just act at whatever's available. I talk to my dogs all the time and it makes me look completely batty. I go in the back room at work and monologue as the villain under my breath as part of my compulsory daydreaming. Don't be embarassed. Embarassment should never be part of tabletop gaming.
Never listen to your own voice, either. It'll shake your confidence in a way you do not need. I've never heard a story about someone who heard their own voice and thought it sounded good.
I use a different accent for every character I play. I'm not always spot on, but I'm a natural mimic when it comes to accents, so I'm not usually too far off. I tried playing a character with the same accent as myself once. We all agreed I should never do that again. It makes it too hard to tell the difference between in-character and out-of-character comments.
So far I've done lebanese, english, russian, southern US (more tennessee twang than the softer southern drawl), scottish, irish, almost did french but the DM vetoed it on the ground that he found it too annoying ....hmm. I think that's it. No, wait. I also briefly had a character with a spanish accent. Still plenty more accents out there to play with. :)
I love to do accents when my group finds the one I've chosen tolerable. Ha!
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The wise Bill Cavalier has to say this about funny voices while GMing. I have only GMed once or twice, and there were only one person needing to speak at a time, so it was easy for me, but if ever I do do something, I will ENJOY saying things in stereotypical voices.
I do accents and voices when I GM, but usually just for npcs of note.
As a player, I sometimes do, but I have a hard time sticking with it, especially when I get irritated (combats often piss me off for various reasons). At that point, my focus shifts to "dont get pissed" and I forget all about "starvimg beggar/rogue just wanted go nip a little food but didnt want to get involved".
My next character will be a goblin sorcerer. We will see how long I can keep that one going. :)
As a player sometimes its hard to maintain an accent over an entire game, so I use mine at the begining of the game and during important social parts.
I am currently playing an exiled Galtian noblewoman who is also a witch - so an Australian fat beard doing an impression of a upper-class French woman is just stupidly distracting rather than adding anything to the game.
I'm generally just happy if I can properly act out how the character feels without actually changing my voice. Except goblins. For some reason, I always give them a voice change.
I've got a few voices that I bring in consistently (most of them stereotypical accents or changes in pitch), although I do try to bring in extra voices when the situation calls for it (including one I call "The Krumb" after the Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged character).
Totally, it's part of the fun and immersion. I'm currently playing a Summoner, a Sage Sorcerer and an Inquisitor:
the first one is captain Gray L.(eo) Eon, captain of a Boros unit (we are playing in the MTG Ravnica setting) and he speaks with a loud voice almost the time, even in a stealth action he shouts to his enemies "Please Surrender now!" with an australian accent. The Eidolon speaks with a roaring voice because its form is that of a Leonid, the best part is when the summoner merges into his eidolon and I use a vocal synth to speak with a double voice;
the second one is Mimesis the sorcerer, a scientist and an engineer who often make exclamations in italian like "Fantastico!", "Magnifico!" or "Bravo, molto bene!" and has a large iron construct (Omegawar) he created for help (in and out of game) that speaks like this;
the last one is Alarico Flaminio Benedicto Santa Espada del Castillo, an Inquisitor in a group of bounty hunters that's very religious and even after he kills an enemy, he closes the enemy's eyes and says a little pray for his soul "Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros!" and the like...
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I do have voices for my own PCs generally, its pretty easy to tell when I'm IC. I do have a few basic voices I use for NPCs sometime, but no stupid accents, unless its totally intentional that the character is faking a bad accent.
I had one GM who insisted on just about every major NPC had the same poor muddled Irish-Scottish accent, we told him to stop already, heh.
The GM at my local gaming shop uses voices a lot.
I like it, but he has a standard issues Gnome and Goblin voice that is very high pitched (think kicked in the jewels) and sort of hurts his throat to talk in. So when we met an NPC gnome we kept asking him questions until his voice started cracking and getting hoarse, then he figured out what we were doing.
HA!