Where did people get the notion that Dwarves should sound like the cast of Trainspotting?

Anyway, I regard accents as a spice to use in moderation -- like Tolkien occasionally introducing phrases in the tongues of Middle Earth, rather than presenting The Lord of the Rings entirely in a language foreign to his readers.

Quote from: Phillip;776053Where did people get the notion that Dwarves should sound like the cast of Trainspotting?

World of Warcraft.

If it isn't dwarvish- IT'S CRAP!!

Quote from: Phillip;776053Where did people get the notion that Dwarves should sound like the cast of Trainspotting?

Penny - pinching mountainfolk, who live in clans and harbour eternal grudges? Yeah I wonder where they did get that motion .

No voices here.

I consider this a weakness in my DMing and believe it's a aspect my groups are missing out.

On the other hand, I don't consider it a major weakness and never had the feeling any player I've had was very interested in having this at the table.

Generaly I try to play to my strengths as a DM, so I consider it a negledible matter. After all I consider it one of the cool things of RPGs that every group plays differently.

Quote from: Phillip;776053Anyway, I regard accents as a spice to use in moderation -- like Tolkien occasionally introducing phrases in the tongues of Middle Earth, rather than presenting The Lord of the Rings entirely in a language foreign to his readers.

Which brings up an interesting point. In my Honor+Intrigue game all the PCs are French and the PCs mostly always speak in French. So do most of the NPCs. But we don't because - well because none of is fluent in French and most of us understand little to no French. So what should the PC and NPC accents sound like?

Mostly, like we speak. With a couple of exceptions. One of the PCs is a pirate. His player uses the stereotype pirate voice and pirate terms - matey, Davy Jones, avast, etc. Which is basically a version of English. Which is technically incorrect since his pirate is French and doesn't even speak English. But it is interesting because it let's us tell when the Foul Corsair is speakin'. Another character is a beautiful, sexy courtier. She speaks in a French accent. Even though she is French. Why? I don't know. Probably because the player can do a French accent and thinks the accent sounds kind of sexy.

On the subject of accents, we had a group of "Italian" NPCs, traveling performers (who had a trained bear) that the PCS met a couple times in their travels. I often had my players run the minor NPCs, especially if their character was not in the scene. I gave them a small index card with pertinent info and let them go. Anyway, both Guiseppe and Angelo both had (very bad) Italian accents. But the player playing Federico decided that he only THOUGHT he was Italian, so he spoke in a thick English accent.  This even though all 3 INSISTED they were blood brothers.:-)

Quote from: cranebump;776258On the subject of accents, we had a group of "Italian" NPCs, traveling performers (who had a trained bear) that the PCS met a couple times in their travels. I often had my players run the minor NPCs, especially if their character was not in the scene. I gave them a small index card with pertinent info and let them go. Anyway, both Guiseppe and Angelo both had (very bad) Italian accents. But the player playing Federico decided that he only THOUGHT he was Italian, so he spoke in a thick English accent.  This even though all 3 INSISTED they were blood brothers.:-)

Sounds like some of the folks I play with. My players also enjoy running the NPCs from time to time.

Quote from: Bren;776228Which brings up an interesting point. In my Honor+Intrigue game all the PCs are French and the PCs mostly always speak in French. So do most of the NPCs. But we don't because - well because none of is fluent in French and most of us understand little to no French. So what should the PC and NPC accents sound like?

Mostly, like we speak. With a couple of exceptions. One of the PCs is a pirate. His player uses the stereotype pirate voice and pirate terms - matey, Davy Jones, avast, etc. Which is basically a version of English. Which is technically incorrect since his pirate is French and doesn't even speak English. But it is interesting because it let's us tell when the Foul Corsair is speakin'. Another character is a beautiful, sexy courtier. She speaks in a French accent. Even though she is French. Why? I don't know. Probably because the player can do a French accent and thinks the accent sounds kind of sexy.

I ran a game at Gen Con. The setting was a city state where a bunch of folks with French accents had taken over and the locals had irish accents.

the players thought it was a joke at first but after about an hour or so where I never slipped they started to realise that it was actually relevant tot eh plot as it told them a host of informatin about each NPC they met.
They where even suprised by 2 NPCs one with an English accent and one with an American accent and they managed to figure out loads of plot links from it.

So in your case I would take "The Asterix Approach' also known as "The Allo Allo Doctrine" this states that if someone is speaking with a French accent they are speaking French, if they are speaking with a German accent they are speaking German. In Asterix this expresses itself as use of different font for Goths, Greeks, folks speaking Latin or Egyptians. In Allo Allo this expresses itself both as "Lisen carefuly I weelll say theese onlee once" and as that daft police office character who speaks with a really bad French accent deliberately to show he is English and can't speak french fluently (Note I am not a fan of Allo Allo but it is a cultural tocuhpoint and as such as defined itself as key in this area )

Quote from: jibbajibba;776394I ran a game at Gen Con. The setting was a city state where a bunch of folks with French accents had taken over and the locals had irish accents.

the players thought it was a joke at first but after about an hour or so where I never slipped they started to realise that it was actually relevant tot eh plot as it told them a host of informatin about each NPC they met.
They where even suprised by 2 NPCs one with an English accent and one with an American accent and they managed to figure out loads of plot links from it.

That sounds good.

QuoteSo in your case I would take "The Asterix Approach' also known as "The Allo Allo Doctrine" this states that if someone is speaking with a French accent they are speaking French, if they are speaking with a German accent they are speaking German.

Defaulting to everyone speaking with a funny French accent 80% of the time would just bug me.

It also doesn't address what accent to use for a German speaking French buy with a German accent or Frenchman who is speaking Dutch or Spanish.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;772186I'm actually pretty good at doing voices and accents for NPCs, but I wonder if sometimes they actually detract from the experience more than they enhance it (and I'm not just talking about "comical" performances). Last campaign (7th Sea in pseudo-Germany) I didn't use any, just a description of the NPC's overall speaking "presence" before talking as I normally would. I think it helped make things feel more serious, which suited the circumstances.

How about you?

I lose track of who sounds like what unless I write it down somewhere with notes like "squeaky," "old blues guy," "effeminate," etc. But yeah, sometimes it just becomes laughable and I paraphrase instead of speaking in character: "The barkeep says two guys matching that description just asked him for directions to the miniature golf course."

Quote from: jibbajibba;773160But what if you are running a PC who does accents?

My longest running PC is a thief who disguises himself all the time. He has multiple aliases all with their own voices, body language etc.

Surely you wouldn't say "Graf walks up to the gruff old bartender and asks in a rich Irish brogue for a pint of their smoothest ale"

I'd imagine that if I sucked at accents, I wouldn't do accents.

Quote from: Bren;773425And speaking of fans, a motorized fan works great for simulating the buzzing of Mi-Go voices in Call of Cthulhu.

There's a fish race in my world that's been a frequent Evil Nasty Bad Guy Race antagonist.  They can articulate human languages, but they have fixed lips and no tongues -- their native tongue is a series of aspirated, modulated whistles.  So what I do is pucker my lips in an exaggerated kissing motion, and speak without moving my lips or using my tongue.  You can well imagine how difficult this is to understand!

Quote from: Bren;776425That sounds good.

Defaulting to everyone speaking with a funny French accent 80% of the time would just bug me.

It also doesn't address what accent to use for a German speaking French buy with a German accent or Frenchman who is speaking Dutch or Spanish.

Well you just have to master doing the voice of a german guy impersonating a Frenchman, I mean how hard can it be

Oh and avoid Quebec

Quote from: Ravenswing;776513I'd imagine that if I sucked at accents, I wouldn't do accents.
 

But if the character does accents then it might be out of your control

This is one of the areas I'm still trying to up my game in. I do try to have a certain "voice" for an NPC that's going to show up more than once, if for no other reason than that - since I'm a sandbox-y no-"plots" kinda guy - I need to establish for myself what this person would do in a given situation. Giving them a distinctive voice helps me with that process. But it's one of the most challenging areas for me. Running complicated running battles with overlapping spell durations and "train leaves Brisbane at 50mph" math is easy in comparison (for me).

That said, I definitely have a handful of stock voices I fall back on in a pinch, and I can neither confirm nor deny that at least half of'em are from Python.


Edit / part II:

Accents, as distinct from voices and mannerisms: I'll throw on a degree of (my bastardized half-imagined American version of) upper-class Brit or East London Cockney, as a way to indicate social class where it's important. And I'll definitely dip into the "foreign-y" accent closet if I'm trying to get across that one person or another is a long way from home.

Quote from: jibbajibba;776517But if the character does accents then it might be out of your control

Mm, I wasn't clear.  I wouldn't do accents.  That'd mean not playing a character with a skill set that the customs of the table would call upon me to act out in a way I couldn't credibly pull off.