Quote from: Opaopajr;917803... and hand puppets, too!

I'm playing a Hiver in our Traveller game and I've seriously been thinking about making a hand puppet for it.

I just added accents and voices, mostly as a PC, but I am working on some NPCs.  
Problem is I am not trained enough to keep them consistent especially if they are any thing subtle.  

So I am stuck with charctature  or monotone.

I do though I'm not very good at it.

Poorly done accents are far, far worse than using your natural voice.  Most people absolutely suck at accents, me included, which is why they're rarely done.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;917855Poorly done accents are far, far worse than using your natural voice.  Most people absolutely suck at accents, me included, which is why they're rarely done.

I tried doing an Irish accent during one session and my players thought the NPC was Italian.

Only if they're silly.

YouTube is your friend for accents, there are all sorts of videos to give help, and I've appealed to YouTube a few times.

There's a few accents I can do.  Most of the time it's cadence and speech patterns, body language or tone shift.  I don't pitch much.  I did a female voice recording once for a Shadowrun voice message system.  My throat hurt like hell while I was doing it, but the players thought it was awesome.  After that I got girls to record stuff like that for me if I ever needed it.

I do different ways of speaking without really thinking about it. I've been told I'm really good at female voices, though I have a deep voice. Found that kind of bemusing. I tend to avoid accents unless they are in the handful of broad accents that I can do.

Quote from: Simlasa;917812I'm playing a Hiver in our Traveller game and I've seriously been thinking about making a hand puppet for it.

Y'know, I've been looking at starfish, microbe, & squid puppet plushies, and no, there really is no Hiver substitute. I guess this gives license to DIY home ec project! If crocheted vaginas (now with uterus and fallopian tubes!) can get a Pinterest/Etsy spot, I'm sure someone can whip you up a Hiver pattern.

I suggest baby alpaca or angora yarn for the quality feathering of the ply.

I try to give important NPCs their own "voice" but not always in terms of accent. Their pitch, tone, attitude and vocabulary can also convey a lot about who they are. Sometimes I think the most important thing in NPC dialog is considering which words they'd use. Are they an aristocrat, an academic, a street thug, or just a working stiff? Whatever, their choice of words should match their background, if nothing else.

Quote from: Doom;917861YouTube is your friend for accents, there are all sorts of videos to give help, and I've appealed to YouTube a few times.

Yes, I've made use of those myself. My last Pathfinder PC was a large squirrel with a thick Scottish accent.

My Hiver PC is currently using a translator that speaks in a moderate gender-neutral tone. Kinda sounds like a therapist, very calm and just a bit condescending.

Alpaca and angora are too drapey for a sock puppet, stay away from silks.  You will want a  some wool in the mix so your puppet will hold its shape at least a little bit.

A couple of my players use them and so do I, but it's seldom by design. A character's name might remind someone of a celebrity or TV/movie character. For example, Arnulf the Fighting Man sounds kinda like Ahnuld, so of course one or more players will break out their Schwarzenegger impressions.

Or the character or monster will do something reminiscent of a TV/movie character, like an ogre my magic-user charmed into attacking a mounted knight with his bare hands, taking out the horse with the first blow. The first thing that popped into everyone's mind was Blazing Saddles:

[video=youtube;28khv-BydeY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28khv-BydeY[/youtube]

From then on, the ogre was called Mongo and talked like him, too.

Sometimes the miniature or sketch of a character/NPC/monster will look like someone famous and the voice will stick. Many years ago I did a sketch of my mage and my DM at the time said he looked like James Mason. For the rest of that campaign, Mollo the Magic-User sounded like James Mason.


Another player had a miniature of a fat cleric who looked like Curly Howard. Mercifully, that PC died soon after because all the "nyuk-nyuk-nyuk" and "woob-woob-woob" got old very quickly.

Quote from: Opaopajr;917876Y'know, I've been looking at starfish, microbe, & squid puppet plushies, and no, there really is no Hiver substitute. I guess this gives license to DIY home ec project! If crocheted vaginas (now with uterus and fallopian tubes!) can get a Pinterest/Etsy spot, I'm sure someone can whip you up a Hiver pattern.

I suggest baby alpaca or angora yarn for the quality feathering of the ply.

Make sure you also get a mask.  And charge for refereeing.

The Saga Begins: https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?435072-Professional-GM-Diary-Caravan-of-Blades

And it only got better.