What to pre-voice
- Read-aloud text: the descriptions you'd normally read from the page when players enter a location.
- "Previously on..." recaps at the start of a session, in a narrator voice.
- Villain speeches and big reveals, performed better than any of us manage on the night.
- Recurring NPCs: the innkeeper's greeting, the oracle's riddle, the ship's AI.
- Letters and messages found in the world, read in the voice of whoever wrote them.
- Prophecies and announcements, echoing through a temple or a city square.
abcVoiceover makes audio ahead of time rather than live, so it suits prepared moments best. Improvised conversation is still yours.
How to set up a campaign
- One project per campaign, with a script per session or per location.
- Build the cast: a narrator, plus a voice for each NPC worth voicing. Record the samples yourself in different characters, or ask players or friends to lend their voices, with their consent.
- Write each moment as a line, short enough to trigger at the right time: one line per beat of a speech, not one wall of text.
- Direct the delivery: Expressive for the villain, Calm for the narrator, more emotion intensity for the dragon.
- Generate before the session, listen through, re-take anything that falls flat.
- Download and load the files into whatever you play from.
Playing them at the table
- In person: a laptop or phone with a decent speaker, files in order in a playlist or a soundboard app.
- Online: virtual tabletops and voice chat servers generally let you play audio files to everyone; check how yours does it.
- Numbered files make it easy:
007 Villain.wavis the seventh line of the session's script. - Keep a printed list of line numbers next to your notes so you can find the right one quickly.
Distinct NPC voices
A clone copies its sample's performance, so record each NPC's sample in character: slower and lower for the old wizard, quick and sly for the merchant. If two NPCs sound too alike, re-record one with a bigger change in pace and attitude. See voicing several characters yourself.
A note on published adventures
Voicing a published adventure's read-aloud text for your own table is one thing; publishing those recordings, in a podcast or an actual-play video, is another, because the text belongs to its publisher. For anything you publish, use text you wrote or have permission to use, and say that the voices are AI-generated.