The Wheel of Voices

It is a time-honored tradition in TRPGs to do character voices. Not every player or even every game includes them, but a classic trope of roleplaying games is the GM who has a different voice for every NPC. It's not necessary for the game, but it does help people get into the story and the roleplaying. But coming up with the voices is a creative process that can take time you don't have in the middle of a game. Might I recommend the following table of accents for your game? Simply roll a d100 and you have a specific voice quirk to embody with any NPC. 

Before I go further, let me preemptively respond to something that many GMs out there are likely to be thinking. "But I can't do good voices! My accents are terrible!" Not to worry, I promise. A bad accent is still more interesting than your normal talking voice. If you're worried about preserving a serious spirit that won't be broken up by a silly voice, use only the ones you're confident in for more serious characters and let that random barkeep have a silly voice. Trust me, your players will appreciate you making the effort to spice up the game--so go ahead and dive into the voices, and watch your players crack up in your gameworld. 

A note before delving into the table itself: I think that whether you are running a world with silly shenanigans or one with dead-serious reality, accents are important. Think about it from a world-building perspective. You have created a big old world with cities and people and cultures and all manner of details. Doesn't it make sense that there are different accents? Shouldn't a dwarf who was born and raised in the dwarven capital sound different when talking from a half-elf who grew up in a gnomish city but spent most of their life in the orcish capital? You can use accents to distinguish your NPCs with relatively little effort, and it will make your gameworld seem a much richer place. To do this, develop an accent for each race or major city (or both). You don't need to create an accent; simply selecting a regional accent you're pretty confident in (or not, depending on your style) will be good enough to represent your world. 

So now the actual table! I have selected various speech quirks, including regional accents, voice descriptors, speech quirks, and a few celebrity impressions. I recommend swapping these impressions out with ones you're comfortable with. The goal, though, is to be distinctive. And of course you can always just pick a descriptor or fudge your roll if it comes up in a way that complicates your plans. But for an average NPC, any voice will do. So grab a d100 and see what your NPC sounds like. 

1-3. Underhar (dwarven capital) accent: Scottish

4-6. Mishara (elven capital) accent: French

7-9. Curagon (halfling capital) accent: English

10-12. Vestry (gnomish capital) accent: Irish

13-15. New Dalton (one human bloodline's capital): New Yorker

16-18. Grob (orcish capital) accent: Eastern European

19-21. Faninite (other human bloodline) accent: American Midwest

22-24. Torga (dwarven, orcish, and human city) accent: Bostonian

25-27. Talon Gorge (human, gnomish, and elven city) accent: Austrailian

28-30. Ringsdale (human, orcish, and gnomish city) accent: German

31-33. Finiel (elven and halfling city) accent: Russian

34-36. Faking an accent (roll a d12 and select from the above 11 accents to fake; a 12 means roll again)

37. Nasal

38. Breathy

39. About to cry

40. Croaking

41. Monotone

42. Gravelly

43. Guttural

44. High-pitched

45. Low-pitched

46. Hoarse

47. Husky

48. Quiet

49. Shrill

50. Singsong

51. Soft

52. Tense

53. Unsteady

54. Childish

55. Falsetto

56. Very deep

57. Airy

58. Barking

59. Drawling

60. Squeaky

61. Joyful

62. Booming

63. Old West accent

64. Nicolas Cage (or your preferred impression)

65. Gilbert Gottfried (or your preferred impression)

66. Sean Connery (or your preferred impression)

67. George Bush (or your preferred impression)

68. John Oliver (or your preferred impression)

69. Mark Wahlberg (or your preferred impression)

70. Jeff Goldblum (or your preferred impression)

71. Owen Wilson (or your preferred impression)

72. Tracy Jordan (from 30 Rock) (or your preferred impression)

73. Harry Caray (or your preferred impression)

74. Jon Lovitz (or your preferred impression)

75. Speaks in the 3rd person

76. Misuses words

77. Constantly interrupts

78. Compulsive liar

79. Corrects slang

80. Speaks from the corner of their mouth

81. Uses big words

82. Uses pet names

83. Constantly uses adages

84. Easily distracted

85. Takes everything literally

86. Argues semantics

87. Constantly uses metaphors

88. Incredibly obscene

89. Stutters

90. Slurs speech

91. Voice cracks

92. Vague descriptions

93. Rhymes names with nonsense words

94. Overuses the word "weasel"

95. Has no sense of volume control

96. Refers constantly to events in history

97. Laughs while speaking often

98. Confrontational

99. Answers questions with questions

100. Matter-of-fact

That's the table; I hope you can use it to spice up your game. Again, feel free to fudge rolls and substitute voices. And since there are four different types of voices here (voice descriptions, speech descriptions, accents, and impressions), you don't really need to be able to do almost 100 unique voices--you're really just taking a detail or two into consideration when you inhabit an NPC. Good luck with the voices!

Coming soon: how to keep your game balanced, how to help players find their fun, and what works (and what doesn't) when you're trying to tell a grand story. Until next time, happy gaming!

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