Topic: Do you use character voices when playing NPCS?

[Druss_the_Legend]

Do you use character voices when playing NPCS?

As a rule, I dont but i ahve been known to bring in guest players to voice important NPCs which has worked well. I have also prerecorded voices of myself and other guest NPCs and played the recorded scene to my players live a few times. Also works well.

As for live in-game character voices, not so much.

interested in what others do.

[Kiesnowski]

Well I personally love to act out all of the character voices.  It gives me a chance to have a little fun in the game.  Not saying I am great at it but it produces more flavor.  Not a lot of laughter.

[Druss_the_Legend]

Well I personally love to act out all of the character voices.  It gives me a chance to have a little fun in the game.  Not saying I am great at it but it produces more flavor.  Not a lot of laughter.

nice! this is a goal for me to work on. have a quite tense roleplaying encounter coming up so will need to channel my bets drill sergeant impersonation and interrupt hell out of any players trying to talk

[jdale]

I'm not any good at it myself, but I have played with a GM who is and it is fun.

[Wolfwood]

I'm definitely not a voice actor. The little that I've tried has been when reading bedtime stories to our daughter back in the day. The biggest problem is that if there was a couple of days between readings (we took turns with my wife), I would have forgotten the voices I used previously. When our RPG sessions are 1-2 months apart, I'd wager Cardinal Richelieu would be mistaken for an impostor the next time the characters met him... "That's not him! He's got an entirely different voice!"

[Frabby]

I try to… of course it’s a sliding scale from random merchant to pivotal NPC who's at the center of the adventure.

Side tangent, besides voice and speech patterns (which I'm not very good at improvising) I found that portrait images really help leaps and bounds in getting important NPCs across and set a tone for them. Most recently did that with photocopied and enlarged portaits of Cigfa, Fuilcwian, Malm and Taim in ye olde Loons of Long Hill scenario for MERP. Worked a treat.

[intothatdarkness]

I do from time to time. It all depends on the NPC and their possible role in the game. I have reasonable voice and accent ability, which is useful in these situations. I've found you can use this to slip in clues about NPCs as well (why did that peasant suddenly use a more noble accent or slip in a word he wouldn't like use?). That's much easier to do if you can use character voice. And once my players figured out I did that, they started paying more attention to both what an NPC was saying and how they were saying it. It's a bit more immersive.