So my players are asking for dialogue from my characters, but that isn't exactly my strongsuit. One of them is requesting full-blown accents and such and I can't do that. He won't shut up about it and I have told him no to the accents, but he won't stop asking for dialogue. Is dialogue required or is it just something some DMs choose to do?
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In the words of the great philosopher, Unicorse, "Aaaannnnd why should I care??"
Best quote from a book ever: "If you love with your eyes, death is forever. If you love with your heart, there is no such thing as parting."- Jonah Cook, Ascendant, Songs of Chaos by Michael R. Miller. Highly recommend
So my players are asking for dialogue from my characters, but that isn't exactly my strongsuit. One of them is requesting full-blown accents and such and I can't do that. He won't shut up about it and I have told him no to the accents, but he won't stop asking for dialogue. Is dialogue required or is it just something some DMs choose to do?
A lot of DMs do, because it helps bring the characters to life more. In roleplay-heavy campaigns people will probably expect it.
But you certainly don't have to, and that player is being a jerk about it.
You do what you can. That's all anyone has any right to ask of you. And no one has any right to demand anything of you.
Some DMs speak in 3rd person for npcs, some in 1st person. Some do accents and dialects, some do not. You do as much as you feel comfortable doing. If you push yourself a little here and there, you might find yourself becoming more capable and more comfortable doing voices, but it is by no means a job requirement. Some players have become so accustomed to seeing professional DM's like Matt Mercer doing a thousand impeccable voices and sound effects per day that they think that's what every DM is supposed to do.
It is not.
Just politely tell the player that you will do what you can do and that's that. If the player refuses to accept that, there are plenty of other tables out there, maybe one of those tables would be more to that player's liking.
Dialogue can be hard. It's acting, and it's improv acting at that. It's an entire set of skills above and beyond mediating a game session.
That said, it's a thing you can do. You won't be great at it at first, but it's a thing you can get better at with practice. I've been doing it for ...uh... a few years, and I'm still not great.
Forget accents. They're a lot of work, they're easy to do badly, and you have to get pretty good before you're not doing it badly.
They're also terrible for establishing a character. No matter how good you are, you only have so many accents, and if that's what you focus on, all your elves will sound the same.
If you want to establish character for your NPCs (and this is something you are going to need to do if you have a lot of NPC interaction. If you don't, it's optional), you should focus on tone and word choice instead. A shopkeeper who says "Good day, how may I serve you?" is noticeably different from one who says "whaddayouwant?", even if you don't adjust your accent at all.
And for random one-off NPCs, that's about the level of work you need to do. They need like one adjective, be it obsequious, brusque, grumpy, bored, whatever. You can talk that way.
The other thing is that you're not the only person who doesn't want to talk out an entire interaction in dialogue. Most of your players don't, either. They're interacting with the NPC to achieve something. Once you establish the terms of the dialogue, you should turn to the mechanics. For instance:
You walk into the shop. The owner eyes you suspiciously at first, then settles down once he realizes you have money. "How may I help you, good sirs?"
I show him the gems. "What can we get for these?"
He hems and haws as he looks them over. "While they are very fine specimens, I really can't sell them easily. Fifty gold for the lot."
Is he playing straight with us?
Roll Insight
17
He thinks you're rubes. Roll persuasion with advantage if you want to bargain.
14
You get him up to 150, but that's probably all he can offer
We'll hang on to them for now, until we get to the city
That's actually pretty high interaction for this type of transaction but I'm doing it as an example, in practice. I usually just have them roll persuasion and let them know how much they get, completely abstracting the process.
Full conversations can be reserved for character-important conversations. Even questioning somebody probably ought to jump to the mechanics fairly quickly, and then just giving the players information or answering their questions.
So my players are asking for dialogue from my characters, but that isn't exactly my strongsuit. One of them is requesting full-blown accents and such and I can't do that. He won't shut up about it and I have told him no to the accents, but he won't stop asking for dialogue. Is dialogue required or is it just something some DMs choose to do?
In the words of the great philosopher, Unicorse, "Aaaannnnd why should I care??"
Best quote from a book ever: "If you love with your eyes, death is forever. If you love with your heart, there is no such thing as parting."- Jonah Cook, Ascendant, Songs of Chaos by Michael R. Miller. Highly recommend
A lot of DMs do, because it helps bring the characters to life more. In roleplay-heavy campaigns people will probably expect it.
But you certainly don't have to, and that player is being a jerk about it.
You do what you can. That's all anyone has any right to ask of you. And no one has any right to demand anything of you.
Some DMs speak in 3rd person for npcs, some in 1st person. Some do accents and dialects, some do not. You do as much as you feel comfortable doing. If you push yourself a little here and there, you might find yourself becoming more capable and more comfortable doing voices, but it is by no means a job requirement. Some players have become so accustomed to seeing professional DM's like Matt Mercer doing a thousand impeccable voices and sound effects per day that they think that's what every DM is supposed to do.
It is not.
Just politely tell the player that you will do what you can do and that's that. If the player refuses to accept that, there are plenty of other tables out there, maybe one of those tables would be more to that player's liking.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Tayn of Darkwood. Human Life Cleric. Lvl 10.
Sometimes it helps the story by giving the NPCs character - you don't have to do accents or anything, just tell the party what they said.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Dialogue can be hard. It's acting, and it's improv acting at that. It's an entire set of skills above and beyond mediating a game session.
That said, it's a thing you can do. You won't be great at it at first, but it's a thing you can get better at with practice. I've been doing it for ...uh... a few years, and I'm still not great.
Forget accents. They're a lot of work, they're easy to do badly, and you have to get pretty good before you're not doing it badly.
They're also terrible for establishing a character. No matter how good you are, you only have so many accents, and if that's what you focus on, all your elves will sound the same.
If you want to establish character for your NPCs (and this is something you are going to need to do if you have a lot of NPC interaction. If you don't, it's optional), you should focus on tone and word choice instead. A shopkeeper who says "Good day, how may I serve you?" is noticeably different from one who says "whaddayouwant?", even if you don't adjust your accent at all.
And for random one-off NPCs, that's about the level of work you need to do. They need like one adjective, be it obsequious, brusque, grumpy, bored, whatever. You can talk that way.
The other thing is that you're not the only person who doesn't want to talk out an entire interaction in dialogue. Most of your players don't, either. They're interacting with the NPC to achieve something. Once you establish the terms of the dialogue, you should turn to the mechanics. For instance:
That's actually pretty high interaction for this type of transaction but I'm doing it as an example, in practice. I usually just have them roll persuasion and let them know how much they get, completely abstracting the process.
Full conversations can be reserved for character-important conversations. Even questioning somebody probably ought to jump to the mechanics fairly quickly, and then just giving the players information or answering their questions.
Maybe you can talk more descriptively in third person: "The statue speaks with a voice like rustling leaves. It tells you that the enemy is near.".