The Voices of Barovia - Roleplaying Strahd and other NPCs | Running Curse of Strahd 5e

Irish is also good for Vistani because there're actually two ethnic heritages for most Travellers in Europe (which most Americans don't realise) - Romani and Irish

You casually burping when doing Strahd was just.... epic! I love your videos.

I want to highlight the difference between the Vistani and other Barovians, so I'm having most Barovians speak a more antiquated british (for the Victorian gothic horror side) while the Vistan ihave the prominent Eastern-European accents.

I feel like I would make Barovians German, and the Vistani Romanian. I would make SOMEone German

Wait you said the Vistani were Irish but you did a Bulgarian accent for Madame Eva

The only gripe I have - and it's a year old video, so it's not a huge complaint, but one I feel worth noting - is that the Vistani are based on the Roma people, not Romanians. The Roma were displaced from their homes in India, and were called 'gypsies' (which was used as a racial slur against them) because they were mistakenly believed to have come from Egypt.

Love the ideas, delivery works too man.

While this is an old video, it's still a great resource! I used the same techniques for the voice of the Abbot when my players first met him and one of my players commented that she hated the way he talked because it was "so creepy" so mission accomplished!

Loved the accents.

As someone who's about to run this campaign in a completely different language (Danish), this was helpful, but not really :D

Great video though! Happy to be a patreon supporter.

Keep in mind that gypsy is a racist slur

Currently running CoS for my friends and, for some reason, I just COULD NOT find my Strahd accent this morning! I tried a little role-play with myself to see if I could get the voice to emerge naturally but to no avail. When you said that Barovians speak closer to the back of the throat, that helped IMMENSELY! Many thanks!

Also, aside from the Irish and Scottish accents, I'm tickled to find that we use the same accents and mannerisms of speech throughout the campaign and NPCs! Our Abbot and Van Richten/Rictavio are uncannily similar.

I like Van RIchten's accent, authough I think i'd rather give him a Van Richten accent (either the 30s version, or the dracula musical version)

Awesome job👍👍👍😁💯💥

Epic!

Bro! Your videos are gold. I’m a new dm preparing for my first run at DMing with curse of strahd… THANK YOU!!!

Ah. Madam Walken sounds pretty authentic.

This is my least favorite video of yours.

niiice!

Dr. Rudolph van Richten based on Dr. Abraham van Helsing
if you wanne lean into the Dracula angle try making him dutch which is easy to learn by listening to south africans.
also fun note old Helsing was pretty goofy and speaks with a lot of Idioms.

when youre a girl and cant pull off guys very well so you genderbend everything

We are not worthy of this level of talent...

The fudge are you talking about, that is not a Romanian accent.

The Cockney accent was perfect until the end where it got kinda Australian

I love this accents. Splendid job, absolutely great

The Abbot sounds like C3PO

I've got a warlock I'll be running with Strahd as a patron soon, and as Strahd got him as a child, he'll have picked up the accent from him as he aged, so I've been looking for videos like this to get an idea of how best to emulate that. Your video was honestly the most helpful, and I can't wait to try this out in our campaign. Thank you so much! 💜

Yeah, I got nervous and made the Vistani sound very Kiwi.

Were Harkon Lukas and Lord Soth represented in 5e! Would have loved to hear your take on them if they were :)

Vallaki is London Via Australia

That burp was hilarious I'm glad he kept it

This is a great video! thank you for sharing. just so you know, in case no one else has told you, g*psy is a slur towards romani people. romani would be the correct term there :)

impersonating strahd*: *burp

Your Romanian voices or more Russian than Romanian. Great job with the video though

I'm currently DMing Curse of Strahd and indeed I have been using a Slavic accent the entire time since 2018. I like what you did although considering the main NPC's names are all Slavic sounding I go with the Slavic accent across the board...there are characters that enter Barovia who enter from outside like Rudolph Von Richten that I give a more Sean Connery Accent, if the character is not native it gives the players a clue as to the foreign identity of the character NPC.

I try to do a dutch accent for Rudolph van Richten, to better emulate his roots as a character inspired by Van Helsing.

Speaking as a Quaker, I don't think you know a great deal about Quakers. While it would probably depend a bit on which sect of Quakerism you were looking at, Quakers never were known for being a particularly insular group. You may be thinking of the Amish or Mennonites. Quakers have never had a practice of separating themselves from mainstream culture, and the branch of Quakerism I'm affiliated with - Liberal Friends - which makes up roughly half the Quakers in the United States, are pretty much secular and/or universalist without any strict dogma.

For reference point, there are Quakers who are non-theists, express belief or connection to multiple religions (Juddaism, Wiccan, Islam, Buddhism, etc.) and more. As far as religions go, that is about as open as you can get.

Just sharing that with you in case you are curious and wanted to learn more. Best to you and thanks for your videos.

There is no such thing as a blank American accent.
What that was is the American west coast accent.
It seems flat because that’s what most American actors speak, and the only time you notice an accent is when someone isn’t using the west coast dialect.

Thank you.

What about Vasilli?

Madam Eva is channeling Christopher Walken. 😂

The lich sounds like treebeard with a hang over. I love it

This was so helpful! Im dming my first game ever and started with curse of strahd. Having Strahd sound scary was my goal but i just couldn't until you showed me how. THANKS.

Who knew that the Abbot was secretly David Attenborough?

Little blood bubble in the throat there huh Strahd?-i might be giving him a fun voice for myself to do Nandor the relentless from what we do in the shadows, i know not rly scary at first thought but i think i should be able to twist it to anger when needed >:)

I heard this one voice actor give Strahd a voice that was somewhere between Death the Wolf and Valentino Hazbin Hotel and I was just 😭💀⚰️ CRYING THAT IS TOO ACCURATE HELP

Rudolph Van Richten is also heavily inspired by Abraham Van Helsing from Dracula. There's a fantastic audiobook of Dracula where the narrator gives him a musical Dutch accent to fit the character. I try to incorporate that: light and whimsical when he's in disguise as Rictavio, dark and withdrawn when he's Van Richten.

I try and do accents but just my voice comez out

This is fantastic. I like how it allows the played to know the origin of NPCs they are talking to. My only criticism is that, imho, all of Barovia is supposed to be eastern European, including the gypsies. The main reason for keeping that is that they're are numerous other lands in the Domain of Dread, each with their own "real world" culture base including Egyptian, Indian, Mississippi river,, French, etc.

Which character is YOUR favorite one to voice? Let us know below!