I started thinking about this not too long ago when I was thinking about a quirk in the code.
If you hear someone from another room, you can tell if it's a male or female voice. Makes sense.
If it's dark, and you're two cords away from someone, codewise you -can't- tell if they're male or female by their voice. Like I said, it's a quirk - I'm sure I'm not the first person to notice this, and I will 'idea' or 'bug' it.
But then I started wondering - do the different races have distinguishable voices? Assuming regional accents and fluency are identical, can you tell a male dwarf voice from a male elf voice? A female human voice from a female mul voice? I'm not asking if you can codewise - I know the answer to that. I'm asking if realistically one -should- be able to pick up on these kind of distinctions, if hearing someone speak in the dark, for instance.
I debated about whether to put this in World Discussion or Code Discussion. I'd love to see some of this reflected in the code (in situations involving darkness, hooded people, voices from other rooms, etc.) but first I was just kind of curious what people thought about different races and their voices.
I'd suspect that the answer is typically no. While a very good speaker might one day figure out how to tell the races apart, for the most part you could assume that the voices sound alike in so far as races go.
It does bring up a good point about recognition, though. How many times do you have to talk with someone face-to-face before you recognize their voice on the phone? Have you ever watched a television commercial with a voice-over and suddenly realize that the speaker was James Earl Jones, Sean Connery, Bill Cosby, or someone else that you recognized? Have you ever heard someone speak behind you, and known who it was without having to see them?
I mention this because of the recent thread discussing items that change your mdesc/sdesc and whether or not you should be able to recognize that person, and so on. I had a character who was once approached in game by a hooded figure who sat at my table and said, "Hello." I responded, "Hello, [person's name]." They seemed surprised and asked how I knew it was them. My response was, "I had you at 'hello.'" While you may or may not find that slightly amusing, the point is, it was someone whose voice my character would have had no trouble recognizing in game due to long association. Really, though, long association isn't necessary - otherwise police wouldn't have people in a lineup step forward and repeat a phrase in the hopes that a victim can pick out an assailant they may not have been able to see based on voice.
Er, there's not any more of a point I wanted to make, but I just wanted to bring that up for you to think about the next time you get mad because someone "recognized" you even though you were cloaked, masked, and wearing sunslits.
I think there should be five groups for this.
First of all, you have the humans-elves-halfers in a single group.
Then you have dwarves and muls in another group.
Gith get the third group.
Half-giants get a group of their own.
All sorts of insects (talking scrabs, manti, whatever) get the fifth. Halflings should sound like human children.
I do like the idea, though...
"A youthful humany male voice says: Blah".
Age can also be a very nice addition.
Halflings sound like the beasts under my bed.
This seems to be a case for fairly using mdesc, at least in the hooded instance. Another paragraph in the long saga that is mdescs.
If you've dealt with this person for a long time, you can look at the mdesc and tell who they are. Then, you can use that knowledge when they speak.
I don't ever expect to codedly know some one by their voice. That's just nuts. I mean, if it happens, cool, but i can't see how it wouldn't be hell to code, or have some serious drawbacks.
Now, as to attaching some sort of racial adjective to the voice, that'd be neat.
I'm not really too into this discussion, but I did read something by someone who mentioned age being a factor. I'd like to point out that many women IRL (and man isn't it sexy?) are thirty years old, and sound ten. Yes, I know. I am a sick, and twisted person. Point being, age doesn't mean squat in a voice, unless we're talking about males before puberty. That is all. Thank you.
Quote from: "mansa"Halflings sound like the beasts under my bed.
Maybe because you put them there as midget sex slaves you twisted little man?
On topic:
I like this, this would likely make it more interesting when someone is hidden and would make it less twinkish to have hidden mdescs. Kudos.