While dm’ing I have experienced the effect that ambience sound appropiate voice add to a session. I remember once when the PC group was in a castle owned by a vampire. Before entering I turned off almost all the lights in the room and I started moving around behind them while describing the rooms with a very slowly paused voice. When I went back to my seat their faces where fixed on me and I almost started laughing. Their attention was allmost on my words. After about half their way through the castle they asked me to stop talking so slowly because I was freaking them out and the girl in the group was really considering leaving because her nerves were killing her. This session was 10 years ago and they still talk about it.

I only mention this because I think it helped a lot with putting emotion in my voice. With only one word to say and remember, it was easy to pay attention to pitch, volume, and amusingly enough, pacing.

I didn’t hear this NPR piece, but he used to talk about while growing up, he would be at the corner store and all the old men would be sitting around outside telling stories. He would sit down to listen and be mesmerized. He once bought a popsicle, sat down to listen to them, and was so enraptured by the stories that he didn’t realize his whole popsicle had melted while he listened.

Don’t I wish I could hold my players’ attention like that!

How could a DM run a game without talking!
Only by a Miracle!

as a teacher, singer and DM, I´m always worried about that! sometimes I can´t even do some stuff I know will damage my voice. Sometimes I won´t even DM!

Yes, it´s good to change the voice (tone), but if the groups give some support(doing that themselves) it becomes much easier!

For the first time last night, I began using ambient sound effects that I downloaded from a web site (forgot where). The tracks are 5-10 minutes long and include docks, busy city street, busy market, rowdy tavern, jungle, shoreline, and a few others. I played these tracks from my laptop and continued to use the music from the Zen.

For reference, I’m running an Eberron campaign. The PCs had just made their way to Stormreach where they explored the city (city and market sounds) and river docks (busy dock sounds), and they also traveled down a jungle river (jungle sounds).

My players appreciated the additional layer of audio, and you could almost see a difference in mood while they played. Every now and then a sound such as a loud bird call or a person shouting might distract us, but overall, it really added a lot to the feel of the game.

You can get a lot of old radio serials for free on http://www.otr.net/

The right audio makes a HUGE difference to the film. Once all the basics are in place (believable acting, decent script, etc), the audio makes the biggest difference between a good film and a great film. Imagine Halloween, Jaws, Star Wars, or LotR without that almost-perfect soundtrack, and it’s not nearly the same movie.

Walt C: Awesome analogy! I’m going to have to get some serials on CD and see what techniques they used.

More on point, I am with you on this one, Martin. Robin Laws made some great suggestions in his various writings about being sure to change the pace, tone and volume of your voice regularly when GMing. Monotone puts people to sleep — plain and simple. Adding sound effects is another way to keep things interesting, but I think you have to be careful about over-doing it, or doing it poorly, and thus ruining the mood.

Another good suggestion from Mr. Laws on use of voice is to be sure to pause for a few moments during long descriptions. Lengthy monologues and speeches are, in general, to be avoided. Give the players a chance to react and respond; it will keep them more engaged.

For the longest time, I envisioned my campaigns as if they were television series. The analogy, while useful, didn’t quite gel.

That’s when I realized that running an RPG in a “tv style” is actually more akin to a radio serial.

In radio, everyone hears the same story but is free to interpret it as they will in their head. As a GM, I have to be very clear about conveying locations and atmosphere to cut down on the “wait a minute! I thought he was right next to me? What do you mean he’s across the room?” complaints.

I do use music and sound effects to enhance the mood (hooray, laptop and wireless connection!), and we do use pictures to help visualize characters (I use a casting model, where we attach RL people to characters), but it’s primarily our words that convey the action. I’m far more likely to describe a room than waste 15 minutes sketching it out.

[As an aside, one key element missing from most four-color superhero games was the fancy costuming. Without a visual reference, it could be quite a mouthful to describe the latest NPC's spandex outfit (Hero Machine really helped me out on this.)]