Portraying accents

Tahquil

I know this has been brought up over and over and over again but I'll like to just readdress some points.

You don't think in an accent so telepathic communication should be full sentences.

You don't you form full ideas, pictures etc so when you send thoughts to people they should be easily to interpret.

We have VOICE and ACCENT to cover accents your characters might have.

If you're a dwarf, good SET ACCENT DWARVEN and we'll know.. you have a dwarven accent! Hoooooorrrraaayyyy! 

Not all players in this game have fluent english.

Yes, you might be. You might even know exactly what you're meaning to say. What you're typing out might be recognised by most people as the typical depiction of a Scottish/Dwarven accent, but not everyone is going to know what you are trying to say even if they are English speaking. Now, consider those who English is a second, third or fourth language, they might not be able to deduce what you're trying to say. 

It would be like going to Japan and asking for directions, but despite knowing Japanese you have no freaking idea what the guy said because he only pronounced the last syllable of each word, smiled like he helped and walked off.

So please, be considerate. Not only for your sub-par English speaking coplayers, but so I don't have to spend half a minute squinting at a sentence wondering if someone is trying to come onto me or just asking a favour.

Amunet

Typed accents enrage me. While we're at it, so do voices that are consistently indicative of an emotion other than the emotion that is being expressed. For example:

Jane frowns and says sadly in a bubbly, cheerful voice, "My mother is dead. The world will never be right again."

Dick smiles and says happily in a hate-filled voice, "I love you, Jane. Meeting you is the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I want nothing more than to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?"

Jonathin

I hate voices that contain the words calming, soothing, seductive, or anything that tries to tell me how I as a player interpret the voice.

Beya

@Jonathin Thanks.

Achilles

Tahquil said:

So please, be considerate. Not only for your sub-par English speaking coplayers, but so I don't have to spend half a minute squinting at a sentence wondering if someone is trying to come onto me or just asking a favour.

The efficient way is to just assume they are hitting on you and asking for a sexual favour.

Tahquil

Sorry boys, I'm text-taken.

Nizaris

Hrm. So, Nizaris talks in a pained voice due to a barbed-wire cilice that he wears around his neck, which he wore at the start of a vow of silence. He always speaks in a pained voice because, well -- it hurts him to talk. See here for background. Is this an issue?

Tahquil

It's more if you have emotional indicators in your voice, then contradicting them when you do actually speak.

Nizaris says gleefully in a pained voice, "Huzzah!" Might not work.

Jiraishin

Agree with most things here, but people -do- think in an accent. I, at least, think of sentences in approximately the way I say them. Also, telepathic communication has much more in common with speech than with thoughts. If they did not, there would be fewer words and much more information in tells.

Nellaundra

If I spoke in channels and tells how I actually thought, Nell would be ousted from everywhere just for sheer annoyance factor.

(Cyrene) Nellaundra says, "Hey every-crap, I forgot to do the dish-is that a pen-oh yeah, food on the sto-ICE CREAM!"

Beya

@Nellaundra I'm not sure what I just read.

I need to think of a new accent which isn't 'curling, soothing'. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I chose that. Elaborate and mellow, perhaps.

Nellaundra

Beya said:

@Nellaundra I'm not sure what I just read.

I need to think of a new accent which isn't 'curling, soothing'. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I chose that. Elaborate and mellow, perhaps.

Exactly.  No one but me can understand my thoughts.

Mannimar

I made an attempt at playing a character with broken achaean, but fluent in his racial language. He didn't appear to speak like that through tells though. After about a week I realized he was too difficult for people to interact with, and I edged away from that and started playing more with voice and accents to get his foreignness and emotion across. Simply put, I've been trying to experiment, and learn what is acceptable.

Mishgul

I used to think in Mirpuri when I was younger, but now I feel like everyone secretly thinks in a light Yorkshire accent.

But I would agree with some of the above posts and say that people do think in accents.

Sylvance

Jiraishin said:

Agree with most things here, but people -do- think in an accent. I, at least, think of sentences in approximately the way I say them. Also, telepathic communication has much more in common with speech than with thoughts. If they did not, there would be fewer words and much more information in tells.

(ETA: It effing ate my quotes again.)

This.  I've absolutely no clue where this strange idea that people don't think in accents has come from. Of course they do... Everybody has an accent, and everybody thinks the way they speak (yes, when they're thinking in words such as in telepathic communication, not when they're thinking about how great it would be slip into a hot bath with Andrew Lloyd-Webber), it's just that people don't tend to notice their own accent. Can we please put that one to bed?

That said, accents are a PITA, usually done badly or inconsistently (before anyone starts, I do include the use of Middle Achaean in this!), and often shatter the fourth wall rather than adding anything to RP.

TL;DR - less rage from the 'No camp'... but less accents from the 'Yes camp' please.