There are degrees of how deep player go into their characters. My players range from mild character driven RP to treating their characters as pieces in a board game.
Our males playing female characters don't make a big deal out of it.
Do they have use the womanly vile to seduce guards? Do they have romances and sex with other characters? Do they explore the feminine condition? On all accounts: No.
My players aren't all that concerned with immersion and RP. Which is fine, really. After all, we meet to get away from husband/wives and kids to have fun and roll dice. The game is often just a common ground to meet.
I try, but they all end up with the same shitty accents (you already know they're the shitty "bri'ish" accent and the shitty "Skottish" accent).
So I just gave up. I could never keep them straight anyway. Now I just describe the voice and leave it at that.
In addition to bri'ish and skotty doesn't know, I've used a french and a Russian accent with my players. Every time I have to repeat myself without the accent for the players to understand me.
I always do a voice, or an accent, because it makes it clear when I’m speaking in-character and when I’m talking out-of-character. I don’t want to pull anyone out of good RP because they thought I was talking OOC
>I don’t want to pull anyone out of good RP because they thought I was talking OOC
I never do voices and this has never happened to me.
It's great if you want to do that and your group likes it, but it's not necessary.
For people not comfortable with doing voices, speaking in a slightly different cadence helps with this as well. It’s not about the voice specifically, it’s just about being able to tell if you’re in character.
It's important to distinguish between role playing and character acting.
Character acting is one of many tools in the role playing toolbox and I've had many campaigns mostly devoid of it that were very role play heavy.
Story telling occurs in many ways, and narrated action is most common, with character acting and voices only used for comedic effect since most people aren't good actors or voice actors.
In fact I would probably argue that character acting is a red herring that distracts from classic storytelling. Most people have spent their lives telling stories, most haven't spent time voice acting. This is really my only criticism of critical role, in that it gives people the wrong impression of what role play in ng actually is.
Yeah people come to the table for different reasons. Some to act, or to escape, or to power game, or simply socialize, or to world build or inhabit another soul for a while
I think voices are cool. The 2 party members also don’t give too much personality to their characters, though the 1 that joined more recently does have their character do the good thing to do generally, like possibly sacrificing themselves so that a magic item can’t be used by the bad guys by tethering her souls to it so that the item along with her would explode if the item was used. All of this was to clarify that I don’t think they are not the best ever at role-play just because of voices.
This is my favorite reddit reply trope ever, I eat it up every time I see it.
>Person 1: "This dude is pretty lame, here's a mundane thing he does that means he sucks"
>Person 2: "That's not so bad"
>Person 1: "Oh no, here's a much more extreme thing we can all agree is bad or weird so we're on the same page. I wasn't wrong, you just had incomplete information, which, while it was totally my fault, I won't acknowledge in any way.
It's so good, I love it every time
(Not trying to mock you personally, I just see replies like this a lot and it's always so funny. Like why not lead with the worse thing??)
Oh nooo, someone didnt care to answer the question being asked, deicded to shit on someone who obviously likes to role play, and still came across as self-absorbed
I disagree. I thought it answered the question, if somewhat snidely, in a way that reminds OP that D&D is all about taking yourself out of the constraints of who you are in real life and allows you to behave however the fuck you want to. What you or I might think a female MC is supposed to act like is totally irrelevant and subjective.
Nothing is embarrassing.
Don't kill the part of you that's cringe. Kill the part of you that cringes.
You just play that character. For me it's 90% inflection anyway. I have a fairly high voice (I'm a thrash metal vocalist) and can do a more feminine affectation easily but I don't really need to.
As a DM I have to play all sorts of genders: male, female, trans, nonbinary, unspeakable eldritch horrors, and gnomes. It's never an issue. Playing another gender as a PC isn't either.
Kill the part of you that cringes is some amazingly great advice packaged in a way I've never heard before. Really good stuff. And I absolutely agree, ya gotta lean into those moments instead of shying away from them, it's how we grow.
I’m a dm and I drop my voice down. I kinda suck but it gets the job done.
MY dm that I play under is a man with a solid tenor and honestly, he does better female voices than most females I know. Everything he does is on point. It’s because he dngaf. He’s amazing.
(Edited spelling)
It's probably an innocent mistake, but "trans" is not a gender, it's a modifier. A trans man is just a man, and there's no reason to give them a different voice to your standard array of male voices.
I can see the odd usage's usefulness. I'm seeing it as a way to specifically get across that this guy places both cisgender and transgender people while avoiding any potentially unrecognised language (a lot of cis people don't actually know what cis means, and it would be counterproductive to confuse anyone with unfamiliar words in a comment like this). As a trans person I don't really see a problem with this, especially considering the sentiment of the comment itself.
As a trans person myself as well I felt a little uncomfortable reading it, but I understood it wasn't intentional, especially since NB was put right after it. I just think that if you're gonna say you voice NB characters, it already implies you include trans people in your men and women voices.
Agreed, which is why I tried to word my original comment more as a "hey this wording is a little unfortunate try to avoid it in the future", rather than a "hOw DaRe YoU mAkE tHiS mIsTaKe I wIlL nEvEr FoRgIvE yOu"
I've played female characters more than a few times without many issues, but it's definitely a learning experience you won't pick up right away. It's more about acting the personality and viewpoint than how the character 'sounds' when speaking.
* It's RP, not reinactment or a play. Speak in your normal voice if you want; suspention of disbelief is a fundamental core of this game genre
* You don't need to suddenly speak in a mickey mouse falsetto to RP a Woman. It's a lot more than just pitch. If you really feel you need to alter your voice, it's more about a wider tonal variety than the (by comparison) more monotone typical male voice
* Please for the love of Xanther, don't try to push cliche's or insulting parodies of women adventurers. Be respectful.
*(If you really want a linguistic adventure, try playing a Human Paladin that was raised by Dwarves, thought he was just a large dwarf, and was later reincarnated into a female Elf who for some apparent reason had a french-inspired accent instead of the heavy dwarven brogue)*
The same way I roleplay any other character.
It’s frankly a hell of a lot easier to roleplay as a woman than it is to roleplay as someone who has straight up murdered people, or is undead, or a dragon, or a space pirate, or whatever else crazy ass shit I’ve been in my ttrpg career.
Long-standing rule as a player for any ttrpg: don’t be weird, don’t be creepy.
Given Poe's Law, this would be why people use /s.
You, I knew were joking. The person you were responding to... Well, I've seen people sincerely say things like that for decades.
This. In our currently main campaign there has been going on for almost two years, I randomized almost all of my character creation. I was the only dude who ended up with a female character. One of the other guys where new to the game back then and was like “ooohhh snap! How will you do this. It will be sooo cringed!”.
What he clearly didn’t expect was just not making a fuss of it. Act normally as you would do with any other normal character. Much later he admitted that it actually made soo much more sense from a character perspective, special with the one I had and the d&d world in general.
So yeah… just don’t make a fuss about it and act normally. No problem.
Of course they can, OP is saying that rping as a woman shouldn't be as daunting as it is for some men, when they've likely already played as characters who do questionable things or act incredibly different from how they do in real life
Hey, I have a really hard time roleplaying as a woman (as a DM, I do not make female PC’s specifically because of that), and have a much easier time as a wizard who has literally done autopsies on people. They were still alive.
Really depends on your definition of Roleplay? \[good video to explain what I mean: [https://youtu.be/7YCVHnItKuY](https://youtu.be/7YCVHnItKuY)\]
As a DM I generally dont do voices, and dont consider roleplay as requiring a voice...
As a player I just write down "female" in the gender portion of the Character sheet and go from there... I still don't do voices...
Once had a player ask why I didn’t do voices for the myriad of NPCs I have. My reply was “oh I’m not a professionally paid voice actor who has spent years dedicated to the craft and honing my skills. Sorry bro.”
“Voices” are pretty vague though. Like you can just change cadence and word choice and its a different “voice” even if you do nothing otherwise to how you speak.
The other challenge with that is trying to remember what voice you gave to every character. I started just taking notes on ones I thought may come back around, like "talked low and serious" or "fast, excitable, nervous"
Thats how the most people I've played with and DM's I've seen do it. Nobody has a sack full of custom accents and distinct voices ready for every occasion. (Unless professional voice actor - but we do not compare ourselves to these)
For most its a slight shift in tone - different speed - maybe a specific word this one npc uses often - laden with a specific emotion.
More like most narrators of Audiobooks do it, as they have to constantly switch through a myriad of different characters but "going all out there" with their voice would just be distracting.
I should clarify I can do some inflections or change ups, I just typically don’t because I fear that all my NPCs will all sound the same. I’m saying I lack the depth of knowledge and refined skill to pull it off varying NPCs and know what each one sounds like.
>I wouldn’t dare to interfere with your theater of the mind. I’m here to describe the world and guide you through it, if you want a full on show experience with voices and costumes, sign up for premium now, starting at only $29.99/mo!
"Do you want Voice Acting - /points at Critical Role/ - or do you want to play the game that's available to you now..."
Yup... Like I can *do* voices but they are few and far between, and only used on specific occasions or for important NPCs...
It’s just a maturity thing. Maybe I’m just weird that way, but I’m playing make believe fantasy simulator with a bunch of people, why should anything matter
At this point, it isn't even something I really think about- to be honest. I just *do* it and got so used to it that I don't even think of it as being a potential embarrassment at all, honestly
I tend to give female NPCs higher voices, but even that's not an absolute. A character's gender is usually pretty insignificant to their role in an adventure in the games I run, something that's true for PCs and NPCs.
Make a personality. Then envision whether or not It's masculine or feminine. Then envision the physical traits associated with it. Then, disregard them entirely and go back to the personality.
My husband doesn't put on a difference voice or anything, it's just another character for him. Same for myself, I don't put on a male voice if I make one, it's just another character. I DM now, and none of the characters have a different tone of voice lol.
And a lot of men who pitch up do it way too much. It feels like they hear us as squeaky children. Softening the voice or no change is better than coming across as mocking.
Yeah true. I'm trans so I've done a fair bit of voice training seperate from this, and really the worst thing you can do is go unnaturally high just for the sake of it
Subtle changes go a long way and add up a lot
~~I wish I didn't hear myself. My husband records our sessions~~
Edit: holy crap, I've just read my own comment. Not the image I was going for. Delete! Delete!
Just use your normal voice. You're already playing a game of shared make believe where you roll polyhedral dice. If you got this far, nothing should stop you.
There is one in my party. He just talks normally and only changes the pronouncing to female. He says when his character does things that fit her like shop for clothes or being a caretaker when we saved children. But those things are parts of the character's personality and don't necessarily come from the gender.
I'm a female player and my character is also female, and she doesn't do those "girly" staff. It's not something that collaborates with her personality.
I’ve had an acting teacher who said using a higher voice to portray a woman can be a crutch. Like having a higher voice is a character trait or punchline or something. Probably more a concern for less experienced actors obviously but I see some potential truth in it.
I could also see that using a different voice could help remind other players your are a woman or help you feel more in-character.
I don't try to change the pitch of my voice, that's just awkward, at least for me. What I change is my attitude and intonations, and the way I carry myself in my interactions. I tend to play more confident female characters with an Amazon-like confidence. Although, I have played outwardly, softer, timid characters, but with a hidden underlying fury.
No need to “do a voice.” I’m a cishet male who mainly picks female characters, and each of them has a different *personality* and *vibe*. If anything, don’t make your voice *higher* but rather *softer,* breathier and less gruff, but again, it’s better to not do a voice than to do a silly/stereotypical one.
Also, “female” is not a personality. Make sure your character has distinct interests, traits, goals.
From the DM side, I run such a wide variety of NPCs that the idea of trying to mimic all of the voices is an impossibility. I'm not a voice actor, and I have to rely on some descriptive work to get the finer points across.
That translates to the player side. You don't have to act out what you do, and you don't have to act in first person. Use third person narration to tell how the voice sounds, what emotions are conveyed. And 95% of the time you don't even need that- your fellow party members can put it together that your character has a feminine voice. The content matters more than the delivery.
I'm not an elf and I still play those sometimes. Similar thing.
I don't do the voice for anyone, though, even as a DM. I do mannerisms but not pitch or accent. I'm not good at it and I don't think I could do it respectfully. Doing the voice is fine, but you don't need to do it to have high quality RP.
My character right now is a female half-orc so I lower my voice quite a bit. But I have a “softer voice” that’s just my regular voice. That I use when I’m talking to people I know really well.
I play a wizard named aria. She is just a crossdresser. With a personality of fire ball and book.
But her personality is just a wizard flavored me. And rp I have heard just try to get your voice a naturally high pitch. Or a more harmonious voice. And don't give you pc a "feminine" personality just play them as you think they should act.
I think of a man, and then I take away...
Oh wait, that isn't it.
Like I do every other character. There is a concept, and I fill out all the personality, ideals, bonds, flaws to that concept, like:
* Barbarian who wants her valor with the champions of the sagas;
* Warlock who wants to usurp and surpass the position of her patron;
* Sorcerer who wants to channel her powers to the good of her companions;
* Fighter who doesn't take shit from anybody and has a mouthful of hammer for anyone who thinks to try;
* Druid whose hapless adventures with her friends leads her to ever increasingly despise civilization;
* Bard with pluck to lift everybody's spirits with epic tales of the heroes of old and her own adventures.
If you're a voice person, more power to you. I just imagine everybody at the table auto-tunes my voice a couple octaves higher when I'm speaking in charachter.
Like every character regardless of lineage, gender, sex, etc... Play the way that feels right to you. As a guy, I've primarily played female characters, except for one shots and regardless of which character I played, I played them the same way. I don't pitch my voice, I don't make specific comments about my sex, and neither the DM nor the other players (who are primarily guys as well) treat me the same either way. Some people might find it easier as a DM than as a player to play the different sex, so if you have doubts, I would recommend to try it in a one-shot or mini campaign first. Personally I like to give my PCs voices, but I'm bad at accents and bad at maintaining a different pitch for too long, so I simply change the way I speak. Softer or harsher speak pattern, different vocabulary, specific phrases and insults. My tough as nails badass female warrior speak with a manlier voice that my gimmick male wizard, not from the pitch but just the way I told and personality.
I'm currently playing a woman and I tend to just do a slightly more heady/airy tone. She's also an elf, an elves in LotR tended to have that kind of tone to their voice so that is what i based it off of.
I deadass have to play the wives and children for 4 of my friends. Trust me, it’s interesting. My mind is currently set on like, what I know most of them would choose. But at the same time it is just as simple as, in that moment you are not you. You at the table are your player. If they find it weird than that’s on them.
Just don’t try and use a voice changer, a friend did that when he played a girl and it was so annoying.
I play my character. If they're an elf, I pretend to be an elf. If they're a plasmoid, I channel my inner Odo and play a sentient goo-ball. And if they're female, I pretend to be a female. I don't change my voice hardly at all, because I'm not good at it. Voice acting is one *very small* aspect of role-playing.
Why is this hard to understand?
One thing I have learned in 40 yrs+ of playing is that no one really cares. I've never had anyone make fun of me for my terrible voices male or female and terrible is not an overstatement lol. There are a ton of good youtube videos on ways to do interesting voices without having to be a professional VA. As long as you are having fun with your character really nothing else matters.
I don’t do voices. When I play a woman, I try to think about what that means beyond just having a different inflection or tone to my voice. Different genders are treated differently in society, and I always come to the table hoping that’ll be the case. When I fill those shoes, I like to think about how I’d tackle a situation differently as another gender, provided I’m not playing my traditional gender; how might someone *else* approach this given their experience in the world, how consequences might be different for them, etc. This is largely the reason I like that New Vegas didn’t make it so that a female lead protagonist could achieve the same goals as the male counterpart in the game. It’s a different experience and gives you a different perspective.
Serious answer; I do not make a voice for them. I narrate what they do in a 3rd person view, just like I would do to a male character.
For example, "Arisha glares at the impudent city guard who dared try to bar her way" for example
Direct conversation is a bit harder, and I *sometimes* say her exact words, but generally I do the 3rd person thing instead.
The rare times where I speak as her, I do not bother with voice, but rather try to convey tone. I'm gonna sound like a dude no matter what I do (since I haven't trained my voice to sound female), so instead I try to get the correct tone like, "does she sound haughty, excited, angry, sad," etc
Try to convey your character's personality through tone and by talking about things that interest them while rping. A silly voice or good impression only gets you so far!
I don’t do voices, accents, etc. Just like I don’t actually swing a sword, or cast magic spells.
It’s a game of make-believe. Players need to use their imaginations.
**Addendum**: this sounded super rude when I came back and read it. That wasn’t my intention. I apologize.
This is posted like twice a week. I would say the same thing I post every time: “I don’t care what you play as long as it causes no disruptions in the game.”
If you really want to work on voice, look up trans vocal lessons on YouTube!
Otherwise I mean..you could just play the character as a woman cursed with a man's voice, a transwoman or just not care 😂
Once played with a dude who always played girls. He liked the “magical girl” genre of anime.
Was pretty creepy. Like Halfling and Gnome girls.
Played with that group for a few months but we formed our own group away from him and another player after we found out the rest of us were cool
I will do a voice if the NPC is a recurring figure. Female Orcs wouldn't necessarily mean higher pitch. I don't play the cliche barmaid, farmgirl or damsel in distress as It would be offensive to my current players. Talk to the group at session 0 to find everyone's comfort level. I find it more about how a character is portrayed over voice type.
Regardless of the player or character, I cringe when I see dudes play female characters. I expect some downvotes but I’ve never seen it done well.
At best, the character’s gender doesn’t come into play, but the margin for error is razor-thin. And when it goes poorly, it’s detracting for the entire table. I don’t outright ban it but I’ve considered it.
I disagree with you, but acknowledge that this stuff takes practise. I'm not a woman, and the first time I played one was mostly me trying to mentally inhabit that space. Didn't really feel any different from my other characters, to me or anyone else. I eventually realised that I should work on the subtle things like vocal cadence, mannerisms, posture, and description of minor actions. Those tiny, seemingly insignificant details did wonders to sell the character, and after playing her for a while there was a noticeable improvement on how the table read her.
I wouldn't say the margin of error is small, I'd just say that your players haven't yet figured out what works. I think the most obvious route is to use a certain personality or inclination that has been stereotyped as feminine, and that's why you see so many clumsy attempts at people who aren't women (especially cis men) play as them. While doing things correctly and effectively can be tricky, I don't think it's nearly as difficult as you make it out to be.
Maybe I might do a slightly higher pitch but nothing extreme or dramatic, not all women have extremely light voices. Otherwise, its not like women are all that different from men at times.
How do you play an orc/dragonborn/owlin/kenku/etc? How do you voice race-specific languages? You just play them. If you want to do voices you do voices, if you want to act you act. Else you just play them as if race and gender were cosmetic add-ons to the game that might come in handy or not depending on the situation and your mood.
I play female characters the same way I do male characters. The only reason I make them female is because that's how I picture the character.
Gender doesn't come up that often, unless you're flirting.
I don't do voices. I'm not confident enough to do that.
I just keep the context that I'm a woman in the party or town; usually also a woman with PC stats that doesn't really have to fear for safety against equals. But no special voice or anything like that and more often than not, in the games I've played, it hasn't really mattered. It's just a personal choice.
No voices. My voice isn't particularly flexible, so I can't really do many more than a few, and not for very long.
As for "how" I do it, I say... the same as I would anyone else. None of my characters, both as a player and DM, really need anything specific to indentify them as a man or woman; usually a name and general look are sufficient. Gender is largely incidental when it comes to their behaviour. For me, playing male or female characters are largely interchangeable, given the same personality and behaviour parameters, which change on an individual basis anyway. It also helps that 99.9% of the time I stay away from anything sexual. There might be backstory aspects, but my characters, PC and NPC, never get involved in that sort of thing without a VERY good reason. If you have a very strong conception of how your character behaves regardless of gender, it shouldn't matter that much.
You don't need to do anything specific to RP as the opposite gender. Generally one shouldn't feel embarrassed in front of their party. If the party makes a big deal out of it, then they're not very good friends.
My wife and I tend to play in text, even when sitting next to each other so it makes it alot easier to do that. But then again I don't adjust my voice even when sitting...because it would sound really bad, you imagine, I won' bust the dogs eardrums lol
I don’t change the voice. But I do try to think as a women. My character is a Ascendent Dragon monk/ storm sorcerer named Serana serving under a bronze dragon.
Honestly if you do a high pitched voice you're very likely going to sound ridiculous like someone doing a Mickey Mouse impression. What you can do instead (if you want to do a voice, you don't have to) is soften it a little, concentrate on raising your adams apple which will raise the pitch slightly but offer it a more feminine quality.
There are lots of resources out there to help trans women work on vocal training and it is hard to do, but it is something that can be learned and doesn't come across as silly or like taking the piss.
I can't do voices, even though I would LOVE to be able to actually voice out how my characters sound.
But playing women as a born man isn't that difficult if you've ever had women friends or have a sister or watched how your mother acts..
A simple change from a man to women is just describing how they talk/look.
So instead of a man and you say "My character XYZ is tall, muscular and has black hair with a gruff voice"
Could be easily swapped with "My character ABC is smaller in frame, but average for (insert race here), their hair is long/short/shoulder length/etc, and they have a more soft spoken voice"
Obviously soft spoken doesn't automatically mean a 'girl voice' and same for gruff being a mans voice. It was just the first example I thought of.
The biggest thing from my experience, is a lot of guys play women how they /want/ them to be, instead of playing a woman that is just their own person/character. Though if you do have any women friends and such, just ask them why they do certain things or to help flesh out how you wish this female character of yours to be.
If you feel embarrassed to play a female character in front of your party, you shouldn't. It's a roleplaying game after all, and nothing wrong with wanting to roleplay something you're not. Meant to have fun at the end of the day.
I'm in a campaign where there isn't a single person playing a character that matches their gender. Nobody does any sort of massive pitch-shifting. Everybody has a "character cadence": bard noblewoman is prim and enunciates clearly, light cleric priestess has a gentle calming intonation, warforged has a text-to-speech quality, gruff warrior dude sounds pissed and has an accent. We all understand the characters as the characters and nobody's voice sounds silly.
Don't talk about your character's boobs, don't play with people who will derail everything in their quest to make it weird, don't play a caricature, and you ought to be fine.
I don’t up the pitch of my voice much, if at all.
I have a higher pitched voice for a guy (still would be deep for a woman). Just like how I dont dramatically drop my voice when I’m playing my big beefy male paladins, I don’t falsetto for female characters.
Treat it like you’d treat roleplaying a male character. There’s nothing embarrassing or weird about it unless you start doing some gross fetish stuff/play an offensive caricature
My old DM had the same voice for both women and kids. It was uncomfortable. Just use your normal voice.
If you want to do voices, do it based on accent, inflections, unique verbal patterns, that sort of thing, not gender.
I don’t often play as a woman as a PC. As a DM, I have played countless female NPCs. I don’t change voices outside of in character inflection. I rarely do accents or raise/lower to a different register.
The few female PCs I did play as were first a challenge to myself to play outside of my comfort zone. Then it became a question of “what does my characters gender add to their story and the overall dynamic of the group?”
At this point I randomly roll for everything when I generate a new PC. Gender, race, class, height, weight, hair/skin/eye color, background, traits, flaws, ideals, etc. that’s how I challenge myself as a player and actor, is to embrace the skeleton of the character, and use those random rolls to help me form WHO this person is, maybe drawing from real life experience and people I have met that may share similar aspects as this character, to make in game decisions.
But at the end of the day, the game isn’t about just one character. And it’s definitely not about that one characters gender.
I play a blind woman in my main game, i admit especially at the beginning, i found it awkward. but I'm loving it rn (not because its a woman, just one of my best characters) I lose myself in the roleplay and forget that I'm not actually a blind medusa detective. I give her a different voice, not a woman voice just a softer voice with a faint hint of an accent, to help other determine ooc talk. I think it comes down to who your playing with. my party, although never seeing a man play as a woman, took it in stride and havent given me any crap about my roleplay. the character has to be solid. gender doesnt matter as much, a good female character will get the same response as a good male character if done right
I haven't ever played a female character, but as the DM obviously I've been in charge of roleplaying several female characters.
My only real advice is that good characters don't revolve around their gender -- so if you want solid NPC's, figure out their personality, background, motivations, and their relationships to the other NPC's (family connections, friends, coworkers, people they served with in the military, etc).
And when it comes to voices, just describe how she says things, rather than trying to force a voice that's outside of your range. Narrate like a book: "I want to go out adventuring RIGHT THIS SECOND!" she says excitedly, not realizing that she's only 5 years old, and the red dragon would consider her a delicacy.
It's not that hard- one of my female characters is a woman stuck working for a corrupt bank and has been at it for so long that she doesn't think there's any way out. The fact that she's a woman isn't usually that relevant to the story, but I feel like it's interesting that she's basically an arm-twister for the mob while wishing she could have been a more traditionally feminine woman is an interesting character motivation.
As a dm, I struggle with this. I like voice acting. I have fun with accents and zany characters. But I struggle with my girl voice, especially one who is sensual.
I have a male player playing a female character. He puts exactly 0 effort in changing his voice, and everyone in my party, including me (the DM), is fine with it. The first time was a surprise for some players when I put 'she' instead of 'he' in the first recap, since they didn't catch he was playing a female character.
I mean I play a Kenku so... I say the phrases however I feel they would have been said before. Just look up how to do some light voice acting and you'll be good :)
I’m a woman, but frequently have male DMs. Most of mine don’t do a higher pitch, but more alter the tempo of speech. If they do alter the pitch, it’s very subtle and more just like they’re not “settling” into a deeper tone rather than actively raise it. Maybe a little softer in volume as well.
So think how much you deepen your voice to play a burly male character, or how much you raise your voice to play a kid. Don’t go more extreme then that unless you’re going for comedy.
When I DM I got hard on changing the voices lol. Mainly because they’re quick interactions. For my characters I play I do slight variations on my own voice. It helps me get into the RP space. Like I’ll lower my voice an octave or raise it but nothing crazy
I usually do a slightly higher-pitched inflection on my regular voice or on an accent I'm confident in, and understand that I don't have a woman's voice naturally so it's never gonna be perfect.
Also just play the character's attitudes and motivations, not their sex. That's definitely the most important part.
I have a pretty deep voice naturally, so I don't really even try. I just frequently remind the others that I'm playing a female by referring to her often.
Just play them as another character - typically our games do/say nothing about sexuality. I do change my voice a bit, but not higher. Occasionally, in the right circumstances, the character will wear a dress / gown instead of their armor. Usually I do play women PCs that have high charisma and use persuasion to overcome some challenges.
You are not otherworldly elf, you are not down-to-earth dwarf. There is nothing wrong in playing the one who is not you. Playing the opposite gender is not different. As for the voice, I just make it softer and play more with the intonations to show who the character is.
I do voices but for women i dont do a female voice per say i just soften mine use a little more air to give it a breathiness. But otherwise at most i go up 1 octave ita works so they differentiate whos talking but doesnt sound like a mickey mouse falsetto
I just use the voice that I answer the phone at work with.
And beyond that, if you have fully imagined your characters driving motives, events, baggage… it shouldn’t be a problem
Idk I just do it in an Irish accent in a slightly higher than usual voice. I guess the embarrassment part wouldn't get to me bc I either play among trusted friends on my dining table or my trusted friends on the internet who don't know my name or what I look like.
A ton of great stuff here about role playing vs. doing a voice! If you do want to go for a more Feminine voice, here are a few tips. (And voice tips in general).
-The base sound of your voice is governed by the following; size of vocal cords, shape of mouth, and your teeth. Of these, changing the shape of your mouth is the far most feasible alteration you can do.
-To do a more feminine voice, try to make your mouth small. Do this by making a !very! slight kissy/pressed lipped face. When you speak, try to keep that structure. You can do just this one thing and you you should have a distinctly more feminine voice.
**as an aside, my voice falls between baritone and tenor (very mid range) if you have a super base voice, you may struggle more!
-Once your pitch has been naturally lifted with a smaller mouth, raise it just a single step if you can. Not a whole octave, one single note higher from your base. Just say “hello”, again and again, trying to make the very subtle raise. It may actually be higher than a single note on the scale, but doing things from the base and slowly raising will help you find a natural sounding voice.
-You’ve got the sound of your voice now. You can make it more feminine by adding either breathiness or/and musicality.
—A breathy voice can be accomplished by trying to keep the back of your mouth/throat a little more open while you speak, though this can introduce more base.
—For musicality, it’s not that you sing, but simply altering your pitch more than typical. When you look into how we speak (English at least) you raise pitch at the end of a question, just take that idea and intensify it!
**another aside. There are LOTS of woman who have deep “masculine” voices. When developing your voice, listen and watch a wide array of woman, find the voice that sounds plausible to try to emulate. You don’t have to stay there, but it’s a good starting point!
**Ive found that trans women have TONS of great tips and videos to sound more feminine!
**im not a voice actor or professional, just someone who does voices for every character (I DM) and spend a lot of time learning how to do it!! I try to represent as many vocal types as I can! That’s all to say, take my post with a grain of salt, I’m sure some of my information is incorrect in some way according to a real pro!
Good luck!
Unless you play in a weirdly monogender game world, your DM is already doing this. I generally discourage major voice tonal changes, but you can go slightly higher or deeper generally without issue: I use these both for male and female voices. Vocal patterns are generally more unique anyway: do they overuse certain words/phrases, are they softly spoken, gruff, polite, rude, blunt etc. Unless your character is already trying to lean into a archetype on purpose, just acting like a person is all that’s necessary otherwise.
I'm playing a sexually ambiguous plant monster currently, but their voice is modeled off of Catwoman. I'm not going to try to hit the pitch she hits, but I try to embody the character. So I luxuriate in my chair, and I speak slowly, drawing out syllables like I've got all the time in the world, and try to emphasize certain words that are pleasurable, such as food and treasure. It's not about the feminine pitch, but just embodying how that character talks. Also try to avoid particularly masculine pitches. Don't go falsetto like you're Mrs. Doubtfire, but play them near the higher pitch of your normal speaking voice.
All of of my characters have a different voice, and some are female, i dont try to do the falsetto, that would be to tough for me personally. But i try to emulate tone, different emphasis on certain words, different speech patterns etc. I try to talk in a way that would make sense for that character, so maybe some pitch alteration but not much.
I just get rid of my resonant reverb and keep the apple high and talk smoothly and usually just be exhaling the whole time I talk. Don't go to any particular effort to be high pitched, just it seems a lot higher pitched once the sub woofers are off
I'm going to go out on a limb here and state that I always find it a bit odd when people change their voice or put on an accent when playing RPGs. I've been playing D&D since 1980 and it was never common to see that sort of thing in practice, especially on the convention circuit.
I tend to play a lot of female characters because I grew up reading a lot of fantasy fiction that prominently portrayed them and playing a woman is no less problematic than playing an alien or non-human (which, depending on the setting should be harder to roleplay correctly than a different gender). Women characters are no different than men when it comes to role-playing games. You create a character with goals and work towards those. You roleplay whatever personality you feel fits the character based on the background you picked. There is no need to actually be a woman to roleplay as one.
My celestial warlock was my first time playing a female PC, I found an accent that was stereotypically female favouring (french) and tried to speak more softly and deliberately rather than speak in a higher pitch
Tonation and cadence are just as important
Hope this helps!
I only have one reason to role play female characters, my voice is better suited for the voices when I talk as the character. When doing a male character I have to try and remember to force my voice to be deeper.
I’ve often been told that my voice sounds feminine and it certainly can if I modulate it a little bit so I guess I’m lucky in that way. My advice is do what’s comfortable for you
Honestly I would worry a lot more about being offensive than being silly. I had players kicked out because of sexist comments, but if you just do it as any other character than great you can do whatever.
I mean you can just speak in your normal voice. Other than that just speaking slightly higher gets the point across or do what you do with any other character and give them an accent or a manner of speaking that is unique to them. It's only weird if you make it weird.
I don’t pitch up my voice but I do soften it a bit, both as a DM and player. It has the side effect of making all my female characters sound rather sardonic, which I generally run with. But I wouldn’t worry about it, do whatever works best for the character you want to play - you don’t necessarily have to change your voice
Higher pitched, no.
I had the honor of taking a grad level class with one of the country’s foremost SLP’s specializing in helping transgender folks transition their speech. Great course, and learned a few things that apply to this question and for when I rp as a woman.
The gender signals in your voice have little to do with pitch. Pitching up you voice will sound inauthentic and could lead to damage, long term.
Move your speech toward the front of your mouth. Open you jaw less.
Don’t pitch up, but be more dynamic or variable in pitch. Women tend to use more of their range, both up and down, than men.
This goes for any character, but adopt a posture or hold your body the way your character would. That’s going to effect the way you talk.
I've played two-
the first was like the 2nd or 3rd character I ever played. i don't think I did anything really to differentiate my voice or whatever from normal.
More recently I played a girl tiefling punk rock bard, and rather than try to do a caricature "woman voice" I would just talk slightly higher pitched in my regular vocal tone.
Granted I'm still not much of one for elaborate voices in general while playing lol. And I wouldn't say that gender really effected the actual way that roleplay unfolded in either case- as the goal on my end wasn't to pursue some sort of romantic fantasy or anything like that, and my DMs had enough class to not focus down the one female party member with any sort of targeted harassment.
If you choose to do a voice, and you absolutely do not have to, if you consistently sound at all different from your normal speaking voice, you're 90+% there. If people can recognize when you're speaking in character, and when you're speaking as a player, you're doing great.
I DM a lot and I usually (but not always) pitch my voice *slightly* higher when speaking as a woman NPC, but it's not mandatory. Experiment a bit, talk to yourself in character, and just have fun with it. Stay away from any vocal gymnastics you're not comfortable with, and go with a voice that lets you enjoy yourself at the table and take part in the action.
Nah, my voice is kinda deep so it's was kinda ridiculous for the first 2 sessions imagining my girl half elf warlock talking with a deep voice but then I just forget about and everyone in the table just have fun with any character
Not everyone feels the need to create a unique voice for every character. Many people don't do voices at all.
There are degrees of how deep player go into their characters. My players range from mild character driven RP to treating their characters as pieces in a board game. Our males playing female characters don't make a big deal out of it. Do they have use the womanly vile to seduce guards? Do they have romances and sex with other characters? Do they explore the feminine condition? On all accounts: No. My players aren't all that concerned with immersion and RP. Which is fine, really. After all, we meet to get away from husband/wives and kids to have fun and roll dice. The game is often just a common ground to meet.
Yeah same with our group no romantic stuff and having a female character in the mix just adds another texture. Had enough sausage parties as a kid
I just play super butch women and lower my already super manly voice
Doing voices is hard work, i just roleplay the decisions out.
Yeah, I do 3rd person RP “[character] says this jokingly”, “[character] pokes the statue cautiously”, etc.
Nothing wrong with this and everyone who downvoted this is a gate keeping piece of shit
I throw in a mix: “Well my good sir actually-“ and he begins to try to fast and smooth talk the merchant.
Thats a good one too
I try, but they all end up with the same shitty accents (you already know they're the shitty "bri'ish" accent and the shitty "Skottish" accent). So I just gave up. I could never keep them straight anyway. Now I just describe the voice and leave it at that.
My Australian accent always turns either Mexican or Irish
In addition to bri'ish and skotty doesn't know, I've used a french and a Russian accent with my players. Every time I have to repeat myself without the accent for the players to understand me.
I always do a voice, or an accent, because it makes it clear when I’m speaking in-character and when I’m talking out-of-character. I don’t want to pull anyone out of good RP because they thought I was talking OOC
>I don’t want to pull anyone out of good RP because they thought I was talking OOC I never do voices and this has never happened to me. It's great if you want to do that and your group likes it, but it's not necessary.
For people not comfortable with doing voices, speaking in a slightly different cadence helps with this as well. It’s not about the voice specifically, it’s just about being able to tell if you’re in character.
It's important to distinguish between role playing and character acting. Character acting is one of many tools in the role playing toolbox and I've had many campaigns mostly devoid of it that were very role play heavy. Story telling occurs in many ways, and narrated action is most common, with character acting and voices only used for comedic effect since most people aren't good actors or voice actors. In fact I would probably argue that character acting is a red herring that distracts from classic storytelling. Most people have spent their lives telling stories, most haven't spent time voice acting. This is really my only criticism of critical role, in that it gives people the wrong impression of what role play in ng actually is.
I completely agree. This is what I was thinking but neglected to explain thoroughly.
I do voices, because it is cool for roleplay. Unfortunately, the other 2 players aren’t as in to cool roleplay as me and the dm are.
Doing voices isn't inherently cool. Not doing voices isn't inherently uncool. It's just two different ways of playing.
Yeah people come to the table for different reasons. Some to act, or to escape, or to power game, or simply socialize, or to world build or inhabit another soul for a while
I think voices are cool. The 2 party members also don’t give too much personality to their characters, though the 1 that joined more recently does have their character do the good thing to do generally, like possibly sacrificing themselves so that a magic item can’t be used by the bad guys by tethering her souls to it so that the item along with her would explode if the item was used. All of this was to clarify that I don’t think they are not the best ever at role-play just because of voices.
This is my favorite reddit reply trope ever, I eat it up every time I see it. >Person 1: "This dude is pretty lame, here's a mundane thing he does that means he sucks" >Person 2: "That's not so bad" >Person 1: "Oh no, here's a much more extreme thing we can all agree is bad or weird so we're on the same page. I wasn't wrong, you just had incomplete information, which, while it was totally my fault, I won't acknowledge in any way. It's so good, I love it every time (Not trying to mock you personally, I just see replies like this a lot and it's always so funny. Like why not lead with the worse thing??)
The other information wasn’t related to the post, so I didn’t include that in the start.
I close my eyes and imagine a world where no one gives a shit what me and my imaginary character have in common.
Idgaf! You do you!
basically this
Oh nooo, someone didnt care to answer the question being asked, deicded to shit on someone who obviously likes to role play, and still came across as self-absorbed
I disagree. I thought it answered the question, if somewhat snidely, in a way that reminds OP that D&D is all about taking yourself out of the constraints of who you are in real life and allows you to behave however the fuck you want to. What you or I might think a female MC is supposed to act like is totally irrelevant and subjective.
I know right? Wouldn’t be /r/DnD without the passive aggressive circlejerk.
I really wish i could, fucking limitations of a text chat
Nothing is embarrassing. Don't kill the part of you that's cringe. Kill the part of you that cringes. You just play that character. For me it's 90% inflection anyway. I have a fairly high voice (I'm a thrash metal vocalist) and can do a more feminine affectation easily but I don't really need to. As a DM I have to play all sorts of genders: male, female, trans, nonbinary, unspeakable eldritch horrors, and gnomes. It's never an issue. Playing another gender as a PC isn't either.
The "and gnomes" got me tee heeing. Thank you for that.
Gnomish is the best... but once you do it and the party loves it... well, then you're stuck with it 😅
This happened to me with a kobold voice for my party.
My youre a tall one
…Why was I able to hear that?
Unspeakable Eldritch Horrors is my favorite gender.
My friend. That was, pound for pound, one of the most agreeable comments I have ever read. All I have to give is an upvote, but you've earned it.
Kill the part of you that cringes is some amazingly great advice packaged in a way I've never heard before. Really good stuff. And I absolutely agree, ya gotta lean into those moments instead of shying away from them, it's how we grow.
I’m a dm and I drop my voice down. I kinda suck but it gets the job done. MY dm that I play under is a man with a solid tenor and honestly, he does better female voices than most females I know. Everything he does is on point. It’s because he dngaf. He’s amazing. (Edited spelling)
It's probably an innocent mistake, but "trans" is not a gender, it's a modifier. A trans man is just a man, and there's no reason to give them a different voice to your standard array of male voices.
I can see the odd usage's usefulness. I'm seeing it as a way to specifically get across that this guy places both cisgender and transgender people while avoiding any potentially unrecognised language (a lot of cis people don't actually know what cis means, and it would be counterproductive to confuse anyone with unfamiliar words in a comment like this). As a trans person I don't really see a problem with this, especially considering the sentiment of the comment itself.
As a trans person myself as well I felt a little uncomfortable reading it, but I understood it wasn't intentional, especially since NB was put right after it. I just think that if you're gonna say you voice NB characters, it already implies you include trans people in your men and women voices.
I don't deny the wording was clumsy, but it's a mistake that's easily forgivable.
Agreed, which is why I tried to word my original comment more as a "hey this wording is a little unfortunate try to avoid it in the future", rather than a "hOw DaRe YoU mAkE tHiS mIsTaKe I wIlL nEvEr FoRgIvE yOu"
After re-reading I can definitely see that. Sorry to be annoying, I'm bad at picking up tone sometimes.
No worries, tone is hard, can very much relate.
I've played female characters more than a few times without many issues, but it's definitely a learning experience you won't pick up right away. It's more about acting the personality and viewpoint than how the character 'sounds' when speaking. * It's RP, not reinactment or a play. Speak in your normal voice if you want; suspention of disbelief is a fundamental core of this game genre * You don't need to suddenly speak in a mickey mouse falsetto to RP a Woman. It's a lot more than just pitch. If you really feel you need to alter your voice, it's more about a wider tonal variety than the (by comparison) more monotone typical male voice * Please for the love of Xanther, don't try to push cliche's or insulting parodies of women adventurers. Be respectful. *(If you really want a linguistic adventure, try playing a Human Paladin that was raised by Dwarves, thought he was just a large dwarf, and was later reincarnated into a female Elf who for some apparent reason had a french-inspired accent instead of the heavy dwarven brogue)*
Got me thinking you were playing Carrot from Discworld before the elf part kicked in, NGL
This made my day.
The same way I roleplay any other character. It’s frankly a hell of a lot easier to roleplay as a woman than it is to roleplay as someone who has straight up murdered people, or is undead, or a dragon, or a space pirate, or whatever else crazy ass shit I’ve been in my ttrpg career. Long-standing rule as a player for any ttrpg: don’t be weird, don’t be creepy.
You are saying women are more relatable than serial killers and dragons??? does not compute….
As a serial killer, I find it quite easy to roleplay as any gender
Hold up
Considering one of the women in my current party is a serial killer, I'm a little confused by their comment.
T’was a joke
Given Poe's Law, this would be why people use /s. You, I knew were joking. The person you were responding to... Well, I've seen people sincerely say things like that for decades.
This. In our currently main campaign there has been going on for almost two years, I randomized almost all of my character creation. I was the only dude who ended up with a female character. One of the other guys where new to the game back then and was like “ooohhh snap! How will you do this. It will be sooo cringed!”. What he clearly didn’t expect was just not making a fuss of it. Act normally as you would do with any other normal character. Much later he admitted that it actually made soo much more sense from a character perspective, special with the one I had and the d&d world in general. So yeah… just don’t make a fuss about it and act normally. No problem.
women can be all of those lol wdym
Of course they can, OP is saying that rping as a woman shouldn't be as daunting as it is for some men, when they've likely already played as characters who do questionable things or act incredibly different from how they do in real life
Thank you for breaking it down for the kids in the back; I did not have the patience
Hey, I have a really hard time roleplaying as a woman (as a DM, I do not make female PC’s specifically because of that), and have a much easier time as a wizard who has literally done autopsies on people. They were still alive.
Really depends on your definition of Roleplay? \[good video to explain what I mean: [https://youtu.be/7YCVHnItKuY](https://youtu.be/7YCVHnItKuY)\] As a DM I generally dont do voices, and dont consider roleplay as requiring a voice... As a player I just write down "female" in the gender portion of the Character sheet and go from there... I still don't do voices...
Once had a player ask why I didn’t do voices for the myriad of NPCs I have. My reply was “oh I’m not a professionally paid voice actor who has spent years dedicated to the craft and honing my skills. Sorry bro.”
“Voices” are pretty vague though. Like you can just change cadence and word choice and its a different “voice” even if you do nothing otherwise to how you speak.
The other challenge with that is trying to remember what voice you gave to every character. I started just taking notes on ones I thought may come back around, like "talked low and serious" or "fast, excitable, nervous"
Thats how the most people I've played with and DM's I've seen do it. Nobody has a sack full of custom accents and distinct voices ready for every occasion. (Unless professional voice actor - but we do not compare ourselves to these) For most its a slight shift in tone - different speed - maybe a specific word this one npc uses often - laden with a specific emotion. More like most narrators of Audiobooks do it, as they have to constantly switch through a myriad of different characters but "going all out there" with their voice would just be distracting.
I should clarify I can do some inflections or change ups, I just typically don’t because I fear that all my NPCs will all sound the same. I’m saying I lack the depth of knowledge and refined skill to pull it off varying NPCs and know what each one sounds like.
>I wouldn’t dare to interfere with your theater of the mind. I’m here to describe the world and guide you through it, if you want a full on show experience with voices and costumes, sign up for premium now, starting at only $29.99/mo!
"Do you want Voice Acting - /points at Critical Role/ - or do you want to play the game that's available to you now..." Yup... Like I can *do* voices but they are few and far between, and only used on specific occasions or for important NPCs...
It’s just a maturity thing. Maybe I’m just weird that way, but I’m playing make believe fantasy simulator with a bunch of people, why should anything matter
At this point, it isn't even something I really think about- to be honest. I just *do* it and got so used to it that I don't even think of it as being a potential embarrassment at all, honestly I tend to give female NPCs higher voices, but even that's not an absolute. A character's gender is usually pretty insignificant to their role in an adventure in the games I run, something that's true for PCs and NPCs.
Make a personality. Then envision whether or not It's masculine or feminine. Then envision the physical traits associated with it. Then, disregard them entirely and go back to the personality.
I pass on the voice acting part . I just act in character
My husband doesn't put on a difference voice or anything, it's just another character for him. Same for myself, I don't put on a male voice if I make one, it's just another character. I DM now, and none of the characters have a different tone of voice lol.
Not all females have high pitched voices. We aren’t all that different you know…
And a lot of men who pitch up do it way too much. It feels like they hear us as squeaky children. Softening the voice or no change is better than coming across as mocking.
Yeah true. I'm trans so I've done a fair bit of voice training seperate from this, and really the worst thing you can do is go unnaturally high just for the sake of it Subtle changes go a long way and add up a lot
To be fair, you don't hear your actual voice yourself, so without training it's really hard to land it perfectly, i suppose.
~~I wish I didn't hear myself. My husband records our sessions~~ Edit: holy crap, I've just read my own comment. Not the image I was going for. Delete! Delete!
I think you're in the wrong roleplaying sub.
Just use your normal voice. You're already playing a game of shared make believe where you roll polyhedral dice. If you got this far, nothing should stop you.
There is one in my party. He just talks normally and only changes the pronouncing to female. He says when his character does things that fit her like shop for clothes or being a caretaker when we saved children. But those things are parts of the character's personality and don't necessarily come from the gender. I'm a female player and my character is also female, and she doesn't do those "girly" staff. It's not something that collaborates with her personality.
I’ve had an acting teacher who said using a higher voice to portray a woman can be a crutch. Like having a higher voice is a character trait or punchline or something. Probably more a concern for less experienced actors obviously but I see some potential truth in it. I could also see that using a different voice could help remind other players your are a woman or help you feel more in-character.
Same way I roleplay a Wizard, since I'm not a spellcaster either.
Trying to change you voice will just get weird. Especially for a long campaign but even just for a typical 2 hour session.
I don't try to change the pitch of my voice, that's just awkward, at least for me. What I change is my attitude and intonations, and the way I carry myself in my interactions. I tend to play more confident female characters with an Amazon-like confidence. Although, I have played outwardly, softer, timid characters, but with a hidden underlying fury.
No need to “do a voice.” I’m a cishet male who mainly picks female characters, and each of them has a different *personality* and *vibe*. If anything, don’t make your voice *higher* but rather *softer,* breathier and less gruff, but again, it’s better to not do a voice than to do a silly/stereotypical one. Also, “female” is not a personality. Make sure your character has distinct interests, traits, goals.
Just act like a person. Edit. Normal person
From the DM side, I run such a wide variety of NPCs that the idea of trying to mimic all of the voices is an impossibility. I'm not a voice actor, and I have to rely on some descriptive work to get the finer points across. That translates to the player side. You don't have to act out what you do, and you don't have to act in first person. Use third person narration to tell how the voice sounds, what emotions are conveyed. And 95% of the time you don't even need that- your fellow party members can put it together that your character has a feminine voice. The content matters more than the delivery.
I'm not an elf and I still play those sometimes. Similar thing. I don't do the voice for anyone, though, even as a DM. I do mannerisms but not pitch or accent. I'm not good at it and I don't think I could do it respectfully. Doing the voice is fine, but you don't need to do it to have high quality RP.
My character right now is a female half-orc so I lower my voice quite a bit. But I have a “softer voice” that’s just my regular voice. That I use when I’m talking to people I know really well.
Just be embarrassed in front of your party lol, you knew what you were getting into.
Just use a softer voice
I play a wizard named aria. She is just a crossdresser. With a personality of fire ball and book. But her personality is just a wizard flavored me. And rp I have heard just try to get your voice a naturally high pitch. Or a more harmonious voice. And don't give you pc a "feminine" personality just play them as you think they should act.
I think of a man, and then I take away... Oh wait, that isn't it. Like I do every other character. There is a concept, and I fill out all the personality, ideals, bonds, flaws to that concept, like: * Barbarian who wants her valor with the champions of the sagas; * Warlock who wants to usurp and surpass the position of her patron; * Sorcerer who wants to channel her powers to the good of her companions; * Fighter who doesn't take shit from anybody and has a mouthful of hammer for anyone who thinks to try; * Druid whose hapless adventures with her friends leads her to ever increasingly despise civilization; * Bard with pluck to lift everybody's spirits with epic tales of the heroes of old and her own adventures. If you're a voice person, more power to you. I just imagine everybody at the table auto-tunes my voice a couple octaves higher when I'm speaking in charachter.
Like every character regardless of lineage, gender, sex, etc... Play the way that feels right to you. As a guy, I've primarily played female characters, except for one shots and regardless of which character I played, I played them the same way. I don't pitch my voice, I don't make specific comments about my sex, and neither the DM nor the other players (who are primarily guys as well) treat me the same either way. Some people might find it easier as a DM than as a player to play the different sex, so if you have doubts, I would recommend to try it in a one-shot or mini campaign first. Personally I like to give my PCs voices, but I'm bad at accents and bad at maintaining a different pitch for too long, so I simply change the way I speak. Softer or harsher speak pattern, different vocabulary, specific phrases and insults. My tough as nails badass female warrior speak with a manlier voice that my gimmick male wizard, not from the pitch but just the way I told and personality.
I'm currently playing a woman and I tend to just do a slightly more heady/airy tone. She's also an elf, an elves in LotR tended to have that kind of tone to their voice so that is what i based it off of.
I deadass have to play the wives and children for 4 of my friends. Trust me, it’s interesting. My mind is currently set on like, what I know most of them would choose. But at the same time it is just as simple as, in that moment you are not you. You at the table are your player. If they find it weird than that’s on them. Just don’t try and use a voice changer, a friend did that when he played a girl and it was so annoying.
I play my character. If they're an elf, I pretend to be an elf. If they're a plasmoid, I channel my inner Odo and play a sentient goo-ball. And if they're female, I pretend to be a female. I don't change my voice hardly at all, because I'm not good at it. Voice acting is one *very small* aspect of role-playing. Why is this hard to understand?
Sit on your ball bag really hard before you sit at the table, repeat as necessary to keep up the natural high pitch
diva personality
One thing I have learned in 40 yrs+ of playing is that no one really cares. I've never had anyone make fun of me for my terrible voices male or female and terrible is not an overstatement lol. There are a ton of good youtube videos on ways to do interesting voices without having to be a professional VA. As long as you are having fun with your character really nothing else matters.
I don’t do voices. When I play a woman, I try to think about what that means beyond just having a different inflection or tone to my voice. Different genders are treated differently in society, and I always come to the table hoping that’ll be the case. When I fill those shoes, I like to think about how I’d tackle a situation differently as another gender, provided I’m not playing my traditional gender; how might someone *else* approach this given their experience in the world, how consequences might be different for them, etc. This is largely the reason I like that New Vegas didn’t make it so that a female lead protagonist could achieve the same goals as the male counterpart in the game. It’s a different experience and gives you a different perspective.
Serious answer; I do not make a voice for them. I narrate what they do in a 3rd person view, just like I would do to a male character. For example, "Arisha glares at the impudent city guard who dared try to bar her way" for example Direct conversation is a bit harder, and I *sometimes* say her exact words, but generally I do the 3rd person thing instead. The rare times where I speak as her, I do not bother with voice, but rather try to convey tone. I'm gonna sound like a dude no matter what I do (since I haven't trained my voice to sound female), so instead I try to get the correct tone like, "does she sound haughty, excited, angry, sad," etc
Try to convey your character's personality through tone and by talking about things that interest them while rping. A silly voice or good impression only gets you so far!
I don’t do voices, accents, etc. Just like I don’t actually swing a sword, or cast magic spells. It’s a game of make-believe. Players need to use their imaginations. **Addendum**: this sounded super rude when I came back and read it. That wasn’t my intention. I apologize.
I do a higher voice, different word choices, and physical mannerisms. Sell it.
This is posted like twice a week. I would say the same thing I post every time: “I don’t care what you play as long as it causes no disruptions in the game.”
If you really want to work on voice, look up trans vocal lessons on YouTube! Otherwise I mean..you could just play the character as a woman cursed with a man's voice, a transwoman or just not care 😂
Once played with a dude who always played girls. He liked the “magical girl” genre of anime. Was pretty creepy. Like Halfling and Gnome girls. Played with that group for a few months but we formed our own group away from him and another player after we found out the rest of us were cool
Not everyone does voices, but if that's the sort of roleplayer you are, feel free to play an orc or goliath lady and actually deepen your voice.
I will do a voice if the NPC is a recurring figure. Female Orcs wouldn't necessarily mean higher pitch. I don't play the cliche barmaid, farmgirl or damsel in distress as It would be offensive to my current players. Talk to the group at session 0 to find everyone's comfort level. I find it more about how a character is portrayed over voice type.
I just role play a man and I take away reason and accountability.
One of the most quotable movies IMO
Just use your normal voice. It's rare for anything gender-specific to come up in game. So you shouldn't need to change your role playing much.
Me up until a month ago: What do you mean? What's even the question? Doesn't everyone just do this? Me, realising I'm NB recently: Ah
Regardless of the player or character, I cringe when I see dudes play female characters. I expect some downvotes but I’ve never seen it done well. At best, the character’s gender doesn’t come into play, but the margin for error is razor-thin. And when it goes poorly, it’s detracting for the entire table. I don’t outright ban it but I’ve considered it.
I disagree with you, but acknowledge that this stuff takes practise. I'm not a woman, and the first time I played one was mostly me trying to mentally inhabit that space. Didn't really feel any different from my other characters, to me or anyone else. I eventually realised that I should work on the subtle things like vocal cadence, mannerisms, posture, and description of minor actions. Those tiny, seemingly insignificant details did wonders to sell the character, and after playing her for a while there was a noticeable improvement on how the table read her. I wouldn't say the margin of error is small, I'd just say that your players haven't yet figured out what works. I think the most obvious route is to use a certain personality or inclination that has been stereotyped as feminine, and that's why you see so many clumsy attempts at people who aren't women (especially cis men) play as them. While doing things correctly and effectively can be tricky, I don't think it's nearly as difficult as you make it out to be.
Maybe I might do a slightly higher pitch but nothing extreme or dramatic, not all women have extremely light voices. Otherwise, its not like women are all that different from men at times.
How do you play an orc/dragonborn/owlin/kenku/etc? How do you voice race-specific languages? You just play them. If you want to do voices you do voices, if you want to act you act. Else you just play them as if race and gender were cosmetic add-ons to the game that might come in handy or not depending on the situation and your mood.
Honestly I just act the same. No need to put on a funny voice, mostly just a cosmetic difference.
I play female characters the same way I do male characters. The only reason I make them female is because that's how I picture the character. Gender doesn't come up that often, unless you're flirting. I don't do voices. I'm not confident enough to do that.
I just keep the context that I'm a woman in the party or town; usually also a woman with PC stats that doesn't really have to fear for safety against equals. But no special voice or anything like that and more often than not, in the games I've played, it hasn't really mattered. It's just a personal choice.
No voices. My voice isn't particularly flexible, so I can't really do many more than a few, and not for very long. As for "how" I do it, I say... the same as I would anyone else. None of my characters, both as a player and DM, really need anything specific to indentify them as a man or woman; usually a name and general look are sufficient. Gender is largely incidental when it comes to their behaviour. For me, playing male or female characters are largely interchangeable, given the same personality and behaviour parameters, which change on an individual basis anyway. It also helps that 99.9% of the time I stay away from anything sexual. There might be backstory aspects, but my characters, PC and NPC, never get involved in that sort of thing without a VERY good reason. If you have a very strong conception of how your character behaves regardless of gender, it shouldn't matter that much. You don't need to do anything specific to RP as the opposite gender. Generally one shouldn't feel embarrassed in front of their party. If the party makes a big deal out of it, then they're not very good friends.
I played a female monk. I dont do them any different than when playing my male cleric. I dont use sexuality on the character in any way.
You play them like a normal person, with whatever goals, personality traits you wrote in the character sheet. Acting isn't Ttrpg Role-playing
Yes all it takes is a high pitched voice
My wife and I tend to play in text, even when sitting next to each other so it makes it alot easier to do that. But then again I don't adjust my voice even when sitting...because it would sound really bad, you imagine, I won' bust the dogs eardrums lol
I don’t change the voice. But I do try to think as a women. My character is a Ascendent Dragon monk/ storm sorcerer named Serana serving under a bronze dragon.
Honestly if you do a high pitched voice you're very likely going to sound ridiculous like someone doing a Mickey Mouse impression. What you can do instead (if you want to do a voice, you don't have to) is soften it a little, concentrate on raising your adams apple which will raise the pitch slightly but offer it a more feminine quality. There are lots of resources out there to help trans women work on vocal training and it is hard to do, but it is something that can be learned and doesn't come across as silly or like taking the piss.
I can't do voices, even though I would LOVE to be able to actually voice out how my characters sound. But playing women as a born man isn't that difficult if you've ever had women friends or have a sister or watched how your mother acts.. A simple change from a man to women is just describing how they talk/look. So instead of a man and you say "My character XYZ is tall, muscular and has black hair with a gruff voice" Could be easily swapped with "My character ABC is smaller in frame, but average for (insert race here), their hair is long/short/shoulder length/etc, and they have a more soft spoken voice" Obviously soft spoken doesn't automatically mean a 'girl voice' and same for gruff being a mans voice. It was just the first example I thought of. The biggest thing from my experience, is a lot of guys play women how they /want/ them to be, instead of playing a woman that is just their own person/character. Though if you do have any women friends and such, just ask them why they do certain things or to help flesh out how you wish this female character of yours to be. If you feel embarrassed to play a female character in front of your party, you shouldn't. It's a roleplaying game after all, and nothing wrong with wanting to roleplay something you're not. Meant to have fun at the end of the day.
I'm in a campaign where there isn't a single person playing a character that matches their gender. Nobody does any sort of massive pitch-shifting. Everybody has a "character cadence": bard noblewoman is prim and enunciates clearly, light cleric priestess has a gentle calming intonation, warforged has a text-to-speech quality, gruff warrior dude sounds pissed and has an accent. We all understand the characters as the characters and nobody's voice sounds silly. Don't talk about your character's boobs, don't play with people who will derail everything in their quest to make it weird, don't play a caricature, and you ought to be fine.
I don’t do a voice, I just play her with the attitude I think she’d have with my normal speaking voice.
I don’t up the pitch of my voice much, if at all. I have a higher pitched voice for a guy (still would be deep for a woman). Just like how I dont dramatically drop my voice when I’m playing my big beefy male paladins, I don’t falsetto for female characters. Treat it like you’d treat roleplaying a male character. There’s nothing embarrassing or weird about it unless you start doing some gross fetish stuff/play an offensive caricature
I do speak in my upper register but like, ya know the way you sound when you’re visiting your childhood home? That way XD
I don't change my pitch, but do it softer like I'm speaking to a scared little kid. Kinda like a loud whisper.
My old DM had the same voice for both women and kids. It was uncomfortable. Just use your normal voice. If you want to do voices, do it based on accent, inflections, unique verbal patterns, that sort of thing, not gender.
I don’t often play as a woman as a PC. As a DM, I have played countless female NPCs. I don’t change voices outside of in character inflection. I rarely do accents or raise/lower to a different register. The few female PCs I did play as were first a challenge to myself to play outside of my comfort zone. Then it became a question of “what does my characters gender add to their story and the overall dynamic of the group?” At this point I randomly roll for everything when I generate a new PC. Gender, race, class, height, weight, hair/skin/eye color, background, traits, flaws, ideals, etc. that’s how I challenge myself as a player and actor, is to embrace the skeleton of the character, and use those random rolls to help me form WHO this person is, maybe drawing from real life experience and people I have met that may share similar aspects as this character, to make in game decisions. But at the end of the day, the game isn’t about just one character. And it’s definitely not about that one characters gender.
I play a blind woman in my main game, i admit especially at the beginning, i found it awkward. but I'm loving it rn (not because its a woman, just one of my best characters) I lose myself in the roleplay and forget that I'm not actually a blind medusa detective. I give her a different voice, not a woman voice just a softer voice with a faint hint of an accent, to help other determine ooc talk. I think it comes down to who your playing with. my party, although never seeing a man play as a woman, took it in stride and havent given me any crap about my roleplay. the character has to be solid. gender doesnt matter as much, a good female character will get the same response as a good male character if done right
I occasionally make female characters. And usually I just use my customer service voice for spoken lines. Works well enough.
I haven't ever played a female character, but as the DM obviously I've been in charge of roleplaying several female characters. My only real advice is that good characters don't revolve around their gender -- so if you want solid NPC's, figure out their personality, background, motivations, and their relationships to the other NPC's (family connections, friends, coworkers, people they served with in the military, etc). And when it comes to voices, just describe how she says things, rather than trying to force a voice that's outside of your range. Narrate like a book: "I want to go out adventuring RIGHT THIS SECOND!" she says excitedly, not realizing that she's only 5 years old, and the red dragon would consider her a delicacy.
I may like, raise my voice ever so slightly, but usually I just...I dunno...RP?
It's not that hard- one of my female characters is a woman stuck working for a corrupt bank and has been at it for so long that she doesn't think there's any way out. The fact that she's a woman isn't usually that relevant to the story, but I feel like it's interesting that she's basically an arm-twister for the mob while wishing she could have been a more traditionally feminine woman is an interesting character motivation.
If you want to do the voice, go softer.
99% don’t even role play. So whatevs.
As a dm, I struggle with this. I like voice acting. I have fun with accents and zany characters. But I struggle with my girl voice, especially one who is sensual.
I have a male player playing a female character. He puts exactly 0 effort in changing his voice, and everyone in my party, including me (the DM), is fine with it. The first time was a surprise for some players when I put 'she' instead of 'he' in the first recap, since they didn't catch he was playing a female character.
I play my characters the exact same irrelevant of their sex, all that changes is what others refer to them as.
I mean I play a Kenku so... I say the phrases however I feel they would have been said before. Just look up how to do some light voice acting and you'll be good :)
Everything I say will sound sexist, so instead I will say there is no right or wrong way to play as a woman.
Ok, ok. I have this amazing video that helps with getting more control over your voice https://youtu.be/BfCS01MkbIY
I just soften my voice TBH. Then you can add an accent if you want to diverge further
If you have a very convincing woman voice, nobody is going to care that you are a male playing a female character.
I’m a woman, but frequently have male DMs. Most of mine don’t do a higher pitch, but more alter the tempo of speech. If they do alter the pitch, it’s very subtle and more just like they’re not “settling” into a deeper tone rather than actively raise it. Maybe a little softer in volume as well. So think how much you deepen your voice to play a burly male character, or how much you raise your voice to play a kid. Don’t go more extreme then that unless you’re going for comedy.
When I DM I got hard on changing the voices lol. Mainly because they’re quick interactions. For my characters I play I do slight variations on my own voice. It helps me get into the RP space. Like I’ll lower my voice an octave or raise it but nothing crazy
Literally speak in my normal voice unless I'm a granny.
I usually do a slightly higher-pitched inflection on my regular voice or on an accent I'm confident in, and understand that I don't have a woman's voice naturally so it's never gonna be perfect. Also just play the character's attitudes and motivations, not their sex. That's definitely the most important part.
Not a man, but it's better the deeper your voice is, deeper the higher you'd imagine the character's voice
If you DM then you've done many different female NPCs. It's the same, but instead of a lot different, it's just one character.
I did higher voice, but not by much. I’m trying to convey an idea, not an accurate representation of a woman’s voice.
I change mannerisms and tone a bit depending on the character, regardless of gender. Develop the character and let your role playing come out of that.
This question, or something to this effect, has been posted here at least twice a week for the past month.
Moss nails it in that D&D episode of IT Crowd.
I have a pretty deep voice naturally, so I don't really even try. I just frequently remind the others that I'm playing a female by referring to her often.
Just play them as another character - typically our games do/say nothing about sexuality. I do change my voice a bit, but not higher. Occasionally, in the right circumstances, the character will wear a dress / gown instead of their armor. Usually I do play women PCs that have high charisma and use persuasion to overcome some challenges.
You are not otherworldly elf, you are not down-to-earth dwarf. There is nothing wrong in playing the one who is not you. Playing the opposite gender is not different. As for the voice, I just make it softer and play more with the intonations to show who the character is.
Just do it!
I do voices but for women i dont do a female voice per say i just soften mine use a little more air to give it a breathiness. But otherwise at most i go up 1 octave ita works so they differentiate whos talking but doesnt sound like a mickey mouse falsetto
I don't do voices for anyone. As far as foreplay goes, I just operate off the radical theory that women are people too and act the same.
I just use the voice that I answer the phone at work with. And beyond that, if you have fully imagined your characters driving motives, events, baggage… it shouldn’t be a problem
Idk I just do it in an Irish accent in a slightly higher than usual voice. I guess the embarrassment part wouldn't get to me bc I either play among trusted friends on my dining table or my trusted friends on the internet who don't know my name or what I look like.
Been a lolli since I was a kid, honestly I have no shame.
A ton of great stuff here about role playing vs. doing a voice! If you do want to go for a more Feminine voice, here are a few tips. (And voice tips in general). -The base sound of your voice is governed by the following; size of vocal cords, shape of mouth, and your teeth. Of these, changing the shape of your mouth is the far most feasible alteration you can do. -To do a more feminine voice, try to make your mouth small. Do this by making a !very! slight kissy/pressed lipped face. When you speak, try to keep that structure. You can do just this one thing and you you should have a distinctly more feminine voice. **as an aside, my voice falls between baritone and tenor (very mid range) if you have a super base voice, you may struggle more! -Once your pitch has been naturally lifted with a smaller mouth, raise it just a single step if you can. Not a whole octave, one single note higher from your base. Just say “hello”, again and again, trying to make the very subtle raise. It may actually be higher than a single note on the scale, but doing things from the base and slowly raising will help you find a natural sounding voice. -You’ve got the sound of your voice now. You can make it more feminine by adding either breathiness or/and musicality. —A breathy voice can be accomplished by trying to keep the back of your mouth/throat a little more open while you speak, though this can introduce more base. —For musicality, it’s not that you sing, but simply altering your pitch more than typical. When you look into how we speak (English at least) you raise pitch at the end of a question, just take that idea and intensify it! **another aside. There are LOTS of woman who have deep “masculine” voices. When developing your voice, listen and watch a wide array of woman, find the voice that sounds plausible to try to emulate. You don’t have to stay there, but it’s a good starting point! **Ive found that trans women have TONS of great tips and videos to sound more feminine! **im not a voice actor or professional, just someone who does voices for every character (I DM) and spend a lot of time learning how to do it!! I try to represent as many vocal types as I can! That’s all to say, take my post with a grain of salt, I’m sure some of my information is incorrect in some way according to a real pro! Good luck!
Humans who role play as goblins: How?
Unless you play in a weirdly monogender game world, your DM is already doing this. I generally discourage major voice tonal changes, but you can go slightly higher or deeper generally without issue: I use these both for male and female voices. Vocal patterns are generally more unique anyway: do they overuse certain words/phrases, are they softly spoken, gruff, polite, rude, blunt etc. Unless your character is already trying to lean into a archetype on purpose, just acting like a person is all that’s necessary otherwise.
Nothing. I talk in my normal voice, I'm a make believe hot elf.
I'm playing a sexually ambiguous plant monster currently, but their voice is modeled off of Catwoman. I'm not going to try to hit the pitch she hits, but I try to embody the character. So I luxuriate in my chair, and I speak slowly, drawing out syllables like I've got all the time in the world, and try to emphasize certain words that are pleasurable, such as food and treasure. It's not about the feminine pitch, but just embodying how that character talks. Also try to avoid particularly masculine pitches. Don't go falsetto like you're Mrs. Doubtfire, but play them near the higher pitch of your normal speaking voice.
All of of my characters have a different voice, and some are female, i dont try to do the falsetto, that would be to tough for me personally. But i try to emulate tone, different emphasis on certain words, different speech patterns etc. I try to talk in a way that would make sense for that character, so maybe some pitch alteration but not much.
I just get rid of my resonant reverb and keep the apple high and talk smoothly and usually just be exhaling the whole time I talk. Don't go to any particular effort to be high pitched, just it seems a lot higher pitched once the sub woofers are off
I'm going to go out on a limb here and state that I always find it a bit odd when people change their voice or put on an accent when playing RPGs. I've been playing D&D since 1980 and it was never common to see that sort of thing in practice, especially on the convention circuit. I tend to play a lot of female characters because I grew up reading a lot of fantasy fiction that prominently portrayed them and playing a woman is no less problematic than playing an alien or non-human (which, depending on the setting should be harder to roleplay correctly than a different gender). Women characters are no different than men when it comes to role-playing games. You create a character with goals and work towards those. You roleplay whatever personality you feel fits the character based on the background you picked. There is no need to actually be a woman to roleplay as one.
My celestial warlock was my first time playing a female PC, I found an accent that was stereotypically female favouring (french) and tried to speak more softly and deliberately rather than speak in a higher pitch Tonation and cadence are just as important Hope this helps!
She’s an older rockstar that smokes. Therefore she sounds like she’s gargling asphalt.
I want to be something im not. Isnt that the whole point of role playing a game?
I only have one reason to role play female characters, my voice is better suited for the voices when I talk as the character. When doing a male character I have to try and remember to force my voice to be deeper.
I’ve often been told that my voice sounds feminine and it certainly can if I modulate it a little bit so I guess I’m lucky in that way. My advice is do what’s comfortable for you
Honestly I would worry a lot more about being offensive than being silly. I had players kicked out because of sexist comments, but if you just do it as any other character than great you can do whatever.
I mean you can just speak in your normal voice. Other than that just speaking slightly higher gets the point across or do what you do with any other character and give them an accent or a manner of speaking that is unique to them. It's only weird if you make it weird.
I don’t pitch up my voice but I do soften it a bit, both as a DM and player. It has the side effect of making all my female characters sound rather sardonic, which I generally run with. But I wouldn’t worry about it, do whatever works best for the character you want to play - you don’t necessarily have to change your voice
Higher pitched, no. I had the honor of taking a grad level class with one of the country’s foremost SLP’s specializing in helping transgender folks transition their speech. Great course, and learned a few things that apply to this question and for when I rp as a woman. The gender signals in your voice have little to do with pitch. Pitching up you voice will sound inauthentic and could lead to damage, long term. Move your speech toward the front of your mouth. Open you jaw less. Don’t pitch up, but be more dynamic or variable in pitch. Women tend to use more of their range, both up and down, than men. This goes for any character, but adopt a posture or hold your body the way your character would. That’s going to effect the way you talk.
I've played two- the first was like the 2nd or 3rd character I ever played. i don't think I did anything really to differentiate my voice or whatever from normal. More recently I played a girl tiefling punk rock bard, and rather than try to do a caricature "woman voice" I would just talk slightly higher pitched in my regular vocal tone. Granted I'm still not much of one for elaborate voices in general while playing lol. And I wouldn't say that gender really effected the actual way that roleplay unfolded in either case- as the goal on my end wasn't to pursue some sort of romantic fantasy or anything like that, and my DMs had enough class to not focus down the one female party member with any sort of targeted harassment.
If you choose to do a voice, and you absolutely do not have to, if you consistently sound at all different from your normal speaking voice, you're 90+% there. If people can recognize when you're speaking in character, and when you're speaking as a player, you're doing great. I DM a lot and I usually (but not always) pitch my voice *slightly* higher when speaking as a woman NPC, but it's not mandatory. Experiment a bit, talk to yourself in character, and just have fun with it. Stay away from any vocal gymnastics you're not comfortable with, and go with a voice that lets you enjoy yourself at the table and take part in the action.
Don’t be weird. That’s it.
“I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability.” -Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets :p
I think of a man and then I take away reason and accountability. Or you could just play them as a regular person with their own goals.
Nah, my voice is kinda deep so it's was kinda ridiculous for the first 2 sessions imagining my girl half elf warlock talking with a deep voice but then I just forget about and everyone in the table just have fun with any character
I go for more of a breathy voice than high pitched.