Hi everyone.  I need some advice.  I think my players enjoy my adventures but I am always looking to improve.  I have no experience with acting or voices, besides trying to read books to my kids with expressiveness.  I think my DM-ing could be much improved if I had some teaching, even a little teaching, on voices and the like.  Any advice on good resources?  

Thanks.

As a voice actor and long time thespian, both pro and amateur, this website and this book have been instrumental in my tone, pitch, breathe control and accents. Both worked in my favour when I stated DMing. Enjoy!

I'll second the book, it's solid.

However, I'd advise against that website. I've seen too many actors in auditions as a director who have had terrible results from that.

I wouldn't worry so much about accents though. Accents are a very specific skill that do require practice and work. There are far superior tactics for creating 'quick and dirty' voices that will entertain your players.

Firstly is your tone...trying to talk in a higher or lower tone is something everyone *should* be capable of with little effort. This can really help as a starting point. Try NPCs with each until you are comfortable. Once you've got this down, start playing with pacing. Some people talk faster than others, some talk very slowly. Again trying just this on it's own can help create the *sense* of a character so it's worth practicing on one of your NPCs. 

At basic levels then we've got four 'voices' we can play about with that wil hint at characters: Fast, Slow, High pitched, Low Pitched. Now you can start mixing and matching...that gives you an extra four 'voices' to work with. 

Starting at this basis will actually help you get a sense of where your voice lays and how your mouth and cords respond to different movements and vocalisations. If you ever feel your throat or cords feeling strained after trying these voices, stop immediately and look for vocal warm up techniques...something I recommend GMs do anyway if they are going to try and perform. I like Jeff Rolka because they are singing warm ups that make it easier to access the full range of your voice.

From here you have a jumping off point where you can try changing up what parts of your mouth are making the sounds. So, ever heard someone talking nasally? Often that's because their bottom jaw moves far, far less and the sound is resonating mainly in the front part of the mouth. It is this understanding of the mechanics of the mouth, vocal cords, and diapraghm that can help you to understand accents and how to emulate them. A Northern Irish accent for example tends to need a slight tightening of the top of my throat combined with a radically different placement of my tongue when pronouncing words. 

 With that said, it's great you want to perform your NPCs and such more, that's amazing. However, don't feel pressured to. Shows like CR and the like have played a massive part in creating players who are not only demanding but also unimaginative. They expect battlemaps and don't know how to engage in theatre of the mind. That's not every fan of these shows of course, but it has been one of the ways players have been influenced. I strongly believe that players shouldn't expect half of the things that they do. 

Doing voices is a skill everyone has, some are just more proficient or charismatic but lack practices Don't hesitate to do so as often as you can, using people you know, or public figures as inspiration for voices, accents, tones and mimicry you do as DM. All it takes is some guts and creativity even if all your dwarves sound the same in the end your players will appreciate the effort for doing so. 

You can also get at some differentiation with vocal tics. Someone who talks really fast, or really slow, or says ummmm a lot or has some other catchphrase. It can be enough to make an NPC memorable while still using your own voice. 

I love doing voices in my games. Though it is not always necessary, just the tone of your voice is more than enough to evoke the imagination of the Players.

But For my voice training, I started out simple. I watched tons of Monty Python (The Holy Grail on repeat). Then anything with Sean Connery. Over time I collected more voices from movies and shows. Being of American descent I also honed in on Various Southern Accents, New York, and (Wisconsin which segways into Canadian) just to name a few. None of them are great, but it gives me a breath of option when PCs interact with an NPCs.

I support going with the books and the website listed above as well. I believe the more sources you learn from the better you can build the skill.

My only additional thought is to just have fun with it. Just keep doing it if you want. We all run our games differently.

Thanks for all the tips so far.  

My skillset is definitely limited.  I have played guitar for 20 years but have only one note when I sing-can't go up or down the scale.  Sounds impossible, but true.  So my baseline skill set approaches nil.  

I will read through the book.  I don't expect a miracle but a few voice "colors" would be helpful.  

I think my main group is a handicap as well.  We are all middle aged male doctors (and one chief information officer), much too sophisticated to try something like an accent or voice, especially around our peers!  Role playing in general at my table is difficult although we have had a few good moments.  Again, age and occupation hurt us.  Hopefully these tricks will help.  I encourage role playing at my table and maybe we will all get there together.  

When I play with my kids (11 and 6) it is a little better.  They have no problem imaging anything and I will practice my voices with them.

Any more tips???

I listen to podcasts during my commute and will try imitating the voices that I hear. Or if I get bored with what they're talking about I'll just sometimes play with voices I think could be interesting in the car! It's a great place to practice because no one will ever hear me talking to myself in silly voices as I cruise down the interstate. 

Will I use these exact voices in the future when I'm DMing? Who knows. But the practice doesn't hurt and will hopefully make me feel more confident in doing them knowing that I've spent hours playing with them and hearing what they sound like. 

I know there are more "professional" ways to learn to do voices and characterizations, but this is free and fits my schedule so I like it best :D 

Quote from martintheactor >>

I'll second the book, it's solid.

However, I'd advise against that website. I've seen too many actors in auditions as a director who have had terrible results from that.

I must say, youre right with that concept. Mimricy is not the only key to producing a good accent. Furthermore to what Martintheactor has said, accents are not the be all and end all of creating engaging NPCs. Yes it helps, but it's not important. Knowing the NPC's bond, flaw, ideal etc as well as their plot hook, a few pieces of info they know that the players wouldn't (or would also know too) and sometimes more importantly than all the others, a good solid description of their appearance and/or physical traits are the things that can endear an NPC to your players equally or more than a funny voice can. Setting up their establishing imagery is often the better key to a party remembering an NPC than their quirky vocabulary or silly accent. Thats just my observations from the last couple of years of DMing. That is all. carry on.

P.S. apologies for being late to the party in replies, I live in Australia so most of the time while you're all furiously relying and debating, Im snoring.

Quote from Velstitzen >>

Thanks for all the tips so far.  

My skillset is definitely limited.  I have played guitar for 20 years but have only one note when I sing-can't go up or down the scale.  Sounds impossible, but true.  So my baseline skill set approaches nil.  

I will read through the book.  I don't expect a miracle but a few voice "colors" would be helpful.  

I think my main group is a handicap as well.  We are all middle aged male doctors (and one chief information officer), much too sophisticated to try something like an accent or voice, especially around our peers!  Role playing in general at my table is difficult although we have had a few good moments.  Again, age and occupation hurt us.  Hopefully these tricks will help.  I encourage role playing at my table and maybe we will all get there together.  

When I play with my kids (11 and 6) it is a little better.  They have no problem imaging anything and I will practice my voices with them.

Any more tips???

 
I would highly recommend the warm ups by Jeff Rolka given your difficulties going up or down scales. Specifically the lip trill exercises and they come at scales from a different angle. They might legitimately help. Because your concentration is further forward on in your mouth it can often be enough to psychologically trick you into forgetting the things you think about yourself...such as 'I can't sing'. Biologically, unless you are truly tone deaf...that is, you don't hear music as a series of notes...you can be trained to sing...training style does matter however and like you I once thought myself incapable of singing...lip trills helped me...though your milage may vary.

Occupation isn't a barrier unless you let it be. Having developed and run a communication skills training element specifically after seeing absymal communication skills among trainees and training doctors at a medical roleplay (patient history OSCE), it's been my experience that doctors who know how to be that bit idiosyncratic are more effective at putting their patients at ease. From memory there's a lot of research that backs this up. Did you not have to roleplay during training for patient history and physical exams? Perhaps come at it from the angle of working on communication skills that will help with bedside manner?

I have a lot of strange stories regarding mock patients when I was a medical student.  Many are not suitable for this forum!   Let's just say there are some strange people who worked for my medical school as standardized patients!   ;)

I taught medicine well, both in clinic and to techs and nurses.  (Not trying to sound arrogant but I was told this often).  I used to be a professional teacher (public school, graduate school TA and standardized test prep, like MCAT, GRE and SAT for Kaplan).  So I would say communicate well.  In my current life though, I read radiology studies off my computer from home; I don't work with patients anymore.  

I will work on the lip trill and see if I can make any progress.  Again, going from zero ability to mild ability would be a great improvement.  I think I can make some progress.

So, I can do some accents okay, but I almost never do them for my players due to the fact that I've got too many Europeans that I'm afraid I'll pull out of immersion with a bad impersonation of something they hear all the time. Rather than go for something regional, I instead mess around with pitch and tone (as others have posted) - but I also play around a lot with grammar, vocabulary and syntax. Even without changing up your accent and voice, you can go a long way in creating an evocative character with just the words you choose:

Respectable, more educated NPC? "Salutations, adventurer. I entreat you come in from this ghastly weather. I've precious little to offer you, yet I welcome you nonetheless."

Older, maternal NPC? "Hello there, dearie. Come inside before you catch your death of cold. I have a spare blanket somewhere. Care for a cookie?"

Charismatic rogue NPC? "Hey there, slick. Bet you're sick of this rain. How 'bout you come in and we can chat over a pint? If you can drink it without gagging, it's on the house."

Uneducated, friendly NPC? "Heyo pal. Look atcha, the saddest duck I seen today. Go on, get in 'ere afore ya drown. I ain't got much, but a roof'll do ya, I reckon!"

Quote from theologyofbagels >>

So, I can do some accents okay, but I almost never do them for my players due to the fact that I've got too many Europeans that I'm afraid I'll pull out of immersion with a bad impersonation of something they hear all the time. Rather than go for something regional, I instead mess around with pitch and tone (as others have posted) - but I also play around a lot with grammar, vocabulary and syntax. Even without changing up your accent and voice, you can go a long way in creating an evocative character with just the words you choose:

Respectable, more educated NPC? "Salutations, adventurer. I entreat you come in from this ghastly weather. I've precious little to offer you, yet I welcome you nonetheless."

Older, maternal NPC? "Hello there, dearie. Come inside before you catch your death of cold. I have a spare blanket somewhere. Care for a cookie?"

Charismatic rogue NPC? "Hey there, slick. Bet you're sick of this rain. How 'bout you come in and we can chat over a pint? If you can drink it without gagging, it's on the house."

Uneducated, friendly NPC? "Heyo pal. Look atcha, the saddest duck I seen today. Go on, get in 'ere afore ya drown. I ain't got much, but a roof'll do ya, I reckon!"

 This is great, but for me, it's really challenging to improvise dialogue like this for extended conversations. The words are all in my brain, but my processor is just not fast enough to turn them out in real time.

So for me it can help to have a list of phrases broken out by archetype. Referring to those can help me stay in character and also seem to help me to improvise the rest around those touchstones.

 

So for me it can help to have a list of phrases broken out by archetype. Referring to those can help me stay in character and also seem to help me to improvise the rest around those touchstones.

Does that mean you have a word document or PDF of stereotypical phrases for similar characters?  If so, could you share?