Finding Your Voice #1 - "I can't do accents"
Why that might be your superpower
It’s been getting a little solipsistic around here lately - just me peppering you with posts about my WIP game (but check it out and let me know what you think). Not a lot of value for most people. So, back to one of the things I wanted to talk about here.
I’ve been a voice actor since I was 18. During that time, I recorded so many voiceovers for commercials, TV shows, and even movies that I lost count. So it’s one of the main things I bring to the table when I GM. To me, GMing is a performance, and “doing the voices” is one way I perform and help my players lose themselves in the world we are creating.
I’ve already talked a little bit about how, for many adults, playing is a lost skill and something that needs to be warmed into. “Doing the voices” can be part of that self-consciousness, but it can also be a great way to lose yourself in play. If you don’t always sound like you, you create a bit of distance between yourself and what happens at the table. And for many people, that can help you recover that sense of play. This applies to everyone around the table. There is extra pressure on the DM because they create more than one character, so they potentially have more voices to do and less time to spend doing them to nail something down.
Accents are one tool
They’re not the only vocal tool you have - but it’s the one I’m writing about today. They are a quick way to make yourself sound different to how you usually sound. But many people struggle to “do” accents. But here’s the good news - if you are playing a fantasy or sci-fi game that’s not grounded in our modern world - accuracy be damned.
Because dwarves are not from Scotland, you can’t wander into a pub in the East End of London and find a goblin. So your mangled attempt at a French accent that doesn’t really sound French can totally be the way that elves talk in your game. Because there is no defined accent! You can’t go wrong with what they sound like because no elf will ever walk in the room and shake their head at you (no one from France may do that either, but at least that’s statistically possible). The weird, not quite French, not quite Dutch thing that you do is even better than a spot-on French accent because it’s unique to your world.
So your mangled accent is a superpower - you are creating a whole new dialect. Way to drop some heavy world-building!
Consistency and commitment are key
Go all in on the accent and commit to it. Half-arsing voice work is guaranteed to sound weird. It’s like jumping a big gap. If you don’t run at the jump all out, you will most definitely fall short. Commitment is also great to encourage commitment in others. If people see you going hard and having fun, they are more likely to try themselves than if you look embarrassed for yourself. That’s why the first NPC I introduce in a session with new players always has a voice that is definitely not my own!
If you think it will be hard to sustain, pull back a bit to make consistency easier. Because having the same (or close enough to the same) voice for the same character helps stop confusion. But it only really needs to be consistent within a session. If the character comes back two months later and sounds a bit different, don’t sweat it. No one will really care - if long-term accent consistency is a beef for your players, then you probably need to look at other aspects of your game…
Consistency between people of the same species or language group doesn’t need to be a big worry either. Think of regional accents or even the difference in how young people, older people, or people who have been educated in different ways alter how we talk. If you can be consistent and everyone sounds the same from a similar background - that’s OK. If there’s a big difference - that’s OK too.
How to choose, how to choose, how to choose?
Some of the classic fantasy races already have tropes attached to them - like the Scottish dwarf or the cockney goblin. You can shoot for some of those if you like (and remember shooting but missing, even more than a little, makes that voice your own). One pointer for an accent is words or names in that language. If there are a number of names for, say, gnomes, that sound bouncy and musical and an Irish accent sounds the same to your ear, then attempting one of those might be good for gnomes. And if what comes out of your mouth sounds far from Colin Farrell, all good. He’s not a gnome!
My favourite Critical Role trick
People love CR, or they don’t. But there’s one thing that you can’t deny (mainly because they tell you every episode) that these guys are voice actors. One of the great little tricks they do is if two characters speak to each other in their native tongue, the performers drop all accents and use their natural voice. It’s so elegant and makes so much sense. We sound normal when we are speaking our language to each other, and the accent fades away. It’s a nice way to distinguish between speaking your native tongue and any different voice!
A note of caution on stereotypes
Accents can come with stereotypes attached to them - especially if you are of a completely different ethnic background when you are attempting one. Be really careful about that. Whatever accent you want to do shouldn’t perpetuate stereotypes that go along with it - even if you are mangling it.
The fun of failure
The first rule of Game Club is that you play to have fun. Especially RPGs. There’s no winning with RPGs. We play to lose ourselves in a collective story. Part of the fun is in the unexpected. And failure is one of the greatest generators of surprise. Embrace it. Try an accent - fail at it, have fun, and you are doing exactly what play is meant to be about.
Your inability to do a convincing accent is something special. It helps create a world that is truly your own. There’s nothing else like it - especially the way it sounds!