Voice acting thread

Fellow DMs, lets have a Voice acting thread
what kinds of ranges do you have?
>clyp.it/1ted3s2j

do you have training methods to become better at it?
>mostly just vocal exercises and lost of practice

do you have different voices for each NPC, a generic one for each brand of NPC, just the important ones, or don't even try?
>I usually try to give each brand of NPC a different voice type, Shopkeepers sound different from blacksmiths, but all the shopkeepers sound the same. it gives enough information that the players know basically who's talking without me needing to spell it out.

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I fucking hate voice acting at the table. I don't know why bit it annoys me so much

Without practice it usually get corny, but with a bit of exercise and work it can get very fun.,

Voice acting is useful tool, but many players forget that there are great benefits of just doing mannerisms, or sometimes just describing what happens with your character.

I have a friend who is not really a great actor, or performer, but his descriptions are always on point, though he does a "narrator" point of view that helps with it.

I can the normal reasonable NPC / normal voice, the "pirate/ork/scumbag/Australian" voice, the "refined/noble/elf" voice, the "evil overlord/golem/dragon" voice, and the "goblin/kobold/gnome" voice.

No person is objective judge of his own voice. And few gamers are sociable enough to get judgement from anybody else.

fair enough
then what did you think of my example?\

very true. Mannerisms are very important. this works for lots of things too, a person who changes up their mannerisms, without changing anything else, can still be easily unrecognizable. seriously if you ever want to gain a better appreciation of the Clark Kent alter-ego fooling everyone around him just try switching up your mannerisms. it's astounding how many people will not recognize you.

vocaroo the dragon voice pls

I attempt voice acting quite often as the GM as I like to have scenarios with many different NPCs that yammer back and fourth. I sometimes use tools to make it sound robotic but I think my goblin and rat voices are somewhat interchangeable. I try to hide this with having unique mannerisms with how they speak but I think it's a little obvious that I'm not the best.

I think it's more organic to do it in this fashion and I was hoping that by doing this I'd inspire the rest to try or get lost in the fantasy. (I'm a new GM to a bunch of new players.) In the end I think it just left a clearer distinction between my rping and theirs. They usually are very metagamey and treat people like puzzles to solve instead of living beings. I pretty much do it now since I set the precedent.

>Range
Not much, sadly. I have a high pitched voice, and the lowest I can go still isn't much.

I compensate with acting, accents, verbal tics, manner of speaking (some stutter, speak louder, slowlier, etc.). Thankfully, my native tongue has a bigger range of politeness levels than english does, so it's still easy to distinguish different characters by speech.

I try and customize important NPCs as much as possible, especially if there's more than one in a particular scene and I have to speak with myself. I'm not bad at all that, but I sure wouldn't say no to a lower "base" voice.

I absolutely hate the idea Critical Role and other showgames have been putting out there that you have to do some kind of accent or altered voice for your character, because it usually just leads to dumb jokes, increased volume, talking over one another, constant chatter for memeage, and the overall idea that tabletop is done for giggles and ironically only.

I do a good Sean Connery

Your normal voice sounds SO GIRLY and high pitched. The "male" voice is shockingly natural. That's one hell of a transition. The gruff one sounds forced, but useful for DMing.

>Without practice it usually get corny

Even WITH practice, it's pretty corny. I usually don't bother unless there's some sort of speech or running gag.

Had a mad-man rhyming once, but he wasn't on screen too long.

Comic relief bits.

Short and sweet. I don't really role-play NPCs, I'll give a description of what they want to say or what they're going for and maybe an in-character prompt to the player. Nobody is there to see my acting.


Here you go:

clyp.it/c1ocrvy0

What do you guys think?


...what the fuck is putting that crackle in there? God DAMNIT.

I don't have a voice, so zero.

Text messaging has been a fucking godsend.

>...what the fuck is putting that crackle in there?
Get a pop filter.

Are you mute? Or a highly intelligent dog or something?

He is an ape with a man-like intelligence.

So he's a mute nigger?

Most Dutch accents, about 15-ish English ones, Bariton to tenor. I also describe NPC's well and act out their voice. 10 years of acting experience and done voice acting last year and some years before that, but I don't have time for that these days. I feel it adds a real edge to a story, but you have to avoid the 'corny' pitfall, which is there all the time.

I am good with voices, mostly because as a kid I quoted Warcraft 3 unit responses out of boredom. Sadly we don't game on English and I cant use most of them, but hey I still have like five or so voices, and that is not bad.

English here. We had a guy yesterday playing a Mexican. He had a really posh english voice that sounded even posher when he kept saying "GRINGO"

Really guys he sounded like steven merchant

>clyp.it/1ted3s2j
I can't tell if this is a woman or not. Oh its a trans.
>I can go gruff
Sounds like a dinner lady

I do have a "narrating" voice that I use when Im setting the scene. I slow down and annunciate clearly. Then switch back to my normal voice if they need clearing up about other stuff.

so far I've run games with a text OOC channel and text IC channel instead of voice channels.

1.) my voice can be annoying

2.) I find it hard to focus on and understand people talking and do something else at the same time, which is important if you are GMing

3.) I'm not confident in my ability to explain things well verbally and not interrupt at bad times.

4.) text gives you more time to try to say what you mean and catch mistakes

5.) it's harder to keep records of things done in voice.

6.) it works even when you have mute or deaf players. Or players who don't want to use voice because they have a strong accent or fluent in the written but not the spoken form of the language you are using.


However voice games DO seem to be able to move much faster with is a major problem for me with games where communication is done by text.

Bro come on. You can't talk an walk? You can't watch t.v and eat? I think your selling yourself short. You can do it man!

If I try to talk to or listen to someone while reading, writing, listening to music, or watching a video it tends to not work.

so I'm not sure how I would keep up with GMing tasks while stopping to listen to what players are saying.

Like what?
People tend to take turns talking. I cant even think about what you need to do while people are talking to you.

I mostly present it as if I were writing the dialog. ''The High Priest looks up at you, eyes red with tears, and angrily says you've done enough. He tosses you the cursed rubber chicken.''