As a GM should I use a different voice for a NPC who is, for instance, a sick old man, or if it's a kid, or even a member of the opposite sex? What advice can you give me to enrich NPC acting?
[RPG] How to voice an NPC
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Best Answer
You can, but you can use other audio quirks too.
Quirks define an NPC or a character and if you are sufficiently gifted to be able to impersonate a libertarian communist monkey juggler's voice (or whatever is required) then go for it.
The problem is that more than likely unless you're a talented voice actor your array of voices you can do is likely to be very limited, so it ends up that all NPCs of a particular trope will end up sounding the same.
What I tend to do is choose a few special NPCs and give them a voice quirk, because it can also be a lot of work and effort (not to mention bad for the throat with all those gravely dwarves)
What you can use instead are catchphrases, tics, coughs, pauses, incorrect phrasing, mispronunciation, etc . These are adaptable and can give cues as to an NPCs origin and style without having to assume an actors pose to give vent to an auditory masterpiece. Moreover you can mix these up so that (for example) so that you could have something like:
Combine these two and if the players hear
"By the stone halls of Durkin, these boots are killing me."
They'll know just who this is likely to be.
As an example from my long running Rolemaster campaign I had a dwarf (who started as a Sergeant and ended up being the defacto leader of the nation) had a phrase,
"We slaughtered them."
All his stories would ramble on and on and on and always, always his punchline would be just that. The players lapped it up and from that one simple catchphrase the NPC really grew out to be a well known (and loved) NPC.