Friendship is Dragons
Updates Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays
Page 1330 - Inferior Decorator
Author Notes:
Notice: Guest comic submissions are still open until this arc is finished! Guidelines here.
(Pop-out)
15 Comments:
When GMing Pathfinder, Goblins sound like Gollum, it's great. On the poor side, I cannot do a feminine voice, unless I was doing a Doctor Girlfriend from Venture Brothers or a stereotypical, flamboyant, gay man voice. So I just do "She says..."
My female voices tend to sound like they're from a Monty Python skit. I do find that if you just unabashedly do the voice, most players will accept it and follow the scene anyway.
On a second note: Apparently I can do a Mark Hammil Joker so well that when I was playing in a Wild Talents introduction one shot, my GM gave me a script and said "Do Joker" as we, the heroes, were watching a video of his monologue/crime after the fact.
Oh, I love doing voices when I GM! I'm a little out of practice though; I didn't have time last year to really run a game, but now that I have gotten part of my life together and I can, no one will let me run a game! Getting out the hammy voices is part of my fun.
One of my favorite voices that was used to good effect was this curmudgeon old grandpa voice I gave to an NPC wizard that served as a "Johnson" to a D&D group whenever they wanted a side quest to do. He had no sense of humor, but that was the joke. :3
One of my favorite voices that was used to good effect was this curmudgeon old grandpa voice I gave to an NPC wizard that served as a "Johnson" to a D&D group whenever they wanted a side quest to do. He had no sense of humor, but that was the joke. :3
I was doing funny voices years before I started DMing. It was really just a matter of applying previously practiced skills in a new context. And it's great fun when I do so.
Oh, man, doing the voices is always one of the fun parts of DMing! I’ve gotten to do a couple of fun ones like a flameskull or a dragon, but I think my favorite so far has probably been a nothic (for those of you not familiar with D&D, it’s a creepy one-eyed eldritch thing that reads minds and communicates via telepathy).
I made it speak very softly and sibilantly, referring to itself in the third person (if at all) and to various people around it by descriptions rather than names (so our wood elf ranger was “The Forest Walker”). Lots of staring and head-tilting, too.
I made it speak very softly and sibilantly, referring to itself in the third person (if at all) and to various people around it by descriptions rather than names (so our wood elf ranger was “The Forest Walker”). Lots of staring and head-tilting, too.
Voices have always been one of my favorite tools in my metaphorical GM's kit. I usually don't do voices for accents for random NPC's, but if someone is really meant to stand out (especially if they're meant to be a recurring character), I'll sometimes 'cast' them as an actor and then use that as a basis. Once, running Pathfinder, I created an NPC 'played' by Mark Sheppard (Crowley from Supernatural, Sterling from Leverage), and practiced his voice for a while. Made it even more fun for me to inhabit the character.
But I think my best moments in voicing characters came from when I ran the Doctor Who RPG. I had my PCs meet the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith), and spent a lot of time practicing his accent, rehearsing a monologue I had planned for him that really got people into the gravitas of the scene and made them feel like they were actually interacting with the character.
In a later session of the same game, the group traveled to Rome and met Claudius and Caligula, and studied scenes from I, Claudius to get the vocal quirks of Derek Jacobi and John Hurt right, because a) those are kind of the definitive portrayals, and b) both actors have played major roles on Doctor Who, so it seemed doubly appropriate. And my players loved it. I used Caligula sparingly, but at one point I had them hear him whining about something from another room, implying he was heading their way, and at least one of my players shuddered when I did the voice. I'm ridiculously proud of that moment.
But I think my best moments in voicing characters came from when I ran the Doctor Who RPG. I had my PCs meet the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith), and spent a lot of time practicing his accent, rehearsing a monologue I had planned for him that really got people into the gravitas of the scene and made them feel like they were actually interacting with the character.
In a later session of the same game, the group traveled to Rome and met Claudius and Caligula, and studied scenes from I, Claudius to get the vocal quirks of Derek Jacobi and John Hurt right, because a) those are kind of the definitive portrayals, and b) both actors have played major roles on Doctor Who, so it seemed doubly appropriate. And my players loved it. I used Caligula sparingly, but at one point I had them hear him whining about something from another room, implying he was heading their way, and at least one of my players shuddered when I did the voice. I'm ridiculously proud of that moment.
I got a little shame a few years ago ...
One of the NPC was a romanian, so I decided to mimic the romanian accent.
After a few sentence, one of the players (a black woman) interrupted the game by asking me : "Sorry, I... I don't understand ... Why are you doing this weird racist African accent? What's the point?"
And I realised my romanian accent sucked a lot ... Situation was explained and I stopped doing accents to interpret my characters.
One of the NPC was a romanian, so I decided to mimic the romanian accent.
After a few sentence, one of the players (a black woman) interrupted the game by asking me : "Sorry, I... I don't understand ... Why are you doing this weird racist African accent? What's the point?"
And I realised my romanian accent sucked a lot ... Situation was explained and I stopped doing accents to interpret my characters.
Just because you can't pull off a proper Romanian accent doesn't make you racist.
Being racist would mean you were doing it specifically to mock someone, which you clearly were not.
You won't get better at properly speaking in an accent if you don't practice doing so. In addition, you are roleplaying - likely in a fictional world - so, whose to say that the way you did so isn't the actual way that group of people speaks?
Don't let someone stop you from trying to improve your DMing skills just because they don't like the way you portray certain accents. I doubt anyone would be upset if you did a poor job at replicating a texan accent, a new york accent, or a high society english accent.
Being racist would mean you were doing it specifically to mock someone, which you clearly were not.
You won't get better at properly speaking in an accent if you don't practice doing so. In addition, you are roleplaying - likely in a fictional world - so, whose to say that the way you did so isn't the actual way that group of people speaks?
Don't let someone stop you from trying to improve your DMing skills just because they don't like the way you portray certain accents. I doubt anyone would be upset if you did a poor job at replicating a texan accent, a new york accent, or a high society english accent.
On the other hand, it’s great that you listened to your player! And props for attempting a Romanian accent at all! I wouldn’t even know where to begin with one, honestly.
I'm not racist and I don't plan to be racist in the near future.
That's why she was so confused, since we knew each other for years ...
Basically I answered it was supposed to be a Romanian accent, and everyone at the table agreed it was bad (Myself included after hearing it from a phone) and no one thought ill of it later.
Now, it was something that clearly was putting my players out of the game ... Which was something I didn't want at all.
So given the choice of doing a bad accent and annoy my players in a way i don't like or drop*ping it and make everyone enjoy the RPG, the choice was easy. :)
That's why she was so confused, since we knew each other for years ...
Basically I answered it was supposed to be a Romanian accent, and everyone at the table agreed it was bad (Myself included after hearing it from a phone) and no one thought ill of it later.
Now, it was something that clearly was putting my players out of the game ... Which was something I didn't want at all.
So given the choice of doing a bad accent and annoy my players in a way i don't like or drop*ping it and make everyone enjoy the RPG, the choice was easy. :)
The opportunity to do multiple voices is what I as a player envy most about the GM.
And it’s one of my favourite things about being a GM! Though it’s also possible to have fun with a singular voice as a player. I’m currently playing a busted god of thunder in a game of Masks, and I’m using Hemsworth’s voice as a template. Not only is it fun to do, it gives me ideas of what the character might say, which might not occur to me, the player!
Guest Author's Note:
"I like voices (I know, shocking). I like to use voices as shorthand. This character is big and threatening, they have a deeper voice; this character is timid, they get a higher pitched voice, or a stutter; this character is batty, they get breathy and wildly alter pitch, etc. But I'm not actually a big proponent of the 'all characters must have special voices' aspect that's popped up in RPGs as of late. I certainly enjoy adding flavor to a character via an accent, or a change in timbre, but I don't think it's what makes or breaks a character. Heck, it's not even that important in voice acting. If you think about the voice more than the character themselves, you're going to miss out on a lot of opportunities.
And for those occasions when out-of-character voice gets mixed with in-character? It's easy enough to clarify.
Story Time prompt: Any occasions in your RPG history where a voice was used to great or poor effect? (Forgotten Ones players, please spare me from the many barbs I definitely deserve.)"