Making THE character (third try)

[zypherman]

I live for the day when I see a dwarf speak with a midwestern accent.

This is some heresy right here.

[Talleyman99]

See, when I play a dwarf, when it speak Common I speak like a dwarf. When it speaks dwarven, it's proper English.

[Grand Unified Theory]

That's North-Central American English.

Yuuup. Especially the "Ya, you 'betcha" and "don't'cha-know". Pretty stereotypical, but it's surprisingly rare to hear it.

What's more common is the "uff da" expression. (0:28) Should be incorporated by all nordic-Dwarven types for sure. lol

[nezzerscape]

That's North-Central American English.

Well, Michigan is considered Mid-West and we speak that way (in da UP) where I lived for years.

[nezzerscape]

See, when I play a dwarf, when it speak Common I speak like a dwarf. When it speaks dwarven, it's proper English.

High Ho!

[Fuzziebunny]

I often use the way my character speaks as well as they words they use, to try to help others see their personality. I also think that things you don't say, or the phrases you don't use, can be just as huge an impact as what you do say as well. An example of this was Chime. Chime was painfully polite. She would not utter a rude phrase, not even to an enemy. I tried to express her dislike of various people in a different way.


For me, it is always a struggle to be able to make my character express, in emotes and actions, what ideas I am trying to get across to other players. I tend to gravitate towards characters who are never exactly what they seem. Their goals and agenda are often not right up front for everyone to see. It is a challenge for me because I have an idea in my head of what I want or what I am trying to do. But that isn't always what others perceive when my character is emoting or speaking.

[greypawn]

I live for the day when I see a dwarf speak with a midwestern accent.

The next dwarven council, with Bill Swerski.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBnnon_iZOM

[Kitsunestume]

Since we seem to have meandered in the direction of discussing charchter voice:

For me, it is always a struggle to be able to make my character express, in emotes and actions, what ideas I am trying to get across to other players. I tend to gravitate towards characters who are never exactly what they seem. Their goals and agenda are often not right up front for everyone to see. It is a challenge for me because I have an idea in my head of what I want or what I am trying to do. But that isn't always what others perceive when my character is emoting or speaking.

I can relate to this: using emotes to convey complex concepts and participate in discussions without 'talking' is a unique challenge. My standard method is to just constantly update what I'm doing, which at the end of one event had lead to my contributing over a third of the lines in an 8-person expedition while being one of the three least talkative (IC) people. That was indubitably excessive, and I've tried to scale back since then, but James' inability not to fidget is just as much a part of his character as anything else.

I'll admit that I'm biased towards "Actions speak louder than words", but given the medium, words are speaking for actions, tone, volume, even inactions. If Alice is ignoring Bob, you get three different replies if Alice says "Not listening", *blatantly ignores Bob*, or just doesn't reply at all. The first establishes dialog because clearly Alice IS paying attention but wants to rebuff Bob, the second is a deliberate indication of intent without compromising itself so Bob can at least react appropriately, while the last most of us are usually polite enough to wait for an actual answer before aquardly shuffling off because the player is AFK.

On a similar vein, the words "Go away" have completely different meanings when whimpered, yelled, calmly and distractedly commented, or gravely punctuated. for. emphasis. They can demonstrate emotion that we normally see and hear passively from body language and tonal fluctuation that two quotation marks simply can't convey by themselves.

That being said, I totally admit to being one of those people who talks to their machine-spirits and physically practices an action so I can properly emote whatever my chars are doing at the moment. Nothing like writing up entire articles on fantastical thesis subjects and lecturing to whoever is in the room at the time.