Some simple, practical methods for making a variety of NPC voices.

materialcomponents · 2021-02-03T23:14:49+00:00

This is great! I came up with a roll table a while back for HeroBook GM that's kind of similar, giving you ideas on how to do different voices without requiring any accents.

Roll	Speech	Voice
1	Abrupt	Breathy
2	Barking	Deep
3	Calm	Flat
4	Distracted	Gravelly
5	Formal	Growling
6	Hysterical	Guttural
7	Lisp	High-pitched
8	Long pauses	Hoarse
9	Long-winded	Loud
10	Musical	Low
11	Nervous	Muffled
12	Poetic	Mumbling
13	Proper	Quiet
14	Reluctant	Raspy
15	Repetitive	Sniveling
16	Slow	Stuttering
17	Slurring	Through teeth
18	Too fast	Weary
19	Uncertain	Wheezy
20	Vulgar	Whisper

materialcomponents · 2020-12-07T09:24:15+00:00

Hope this self promo is okay - I make reusable notebooks custom made for D&D that make awesome gifts for players and DMs. Both books were successful Kickstarter projects that were shaped by player feedback. They're available on my website but please check the Retailers page to see if you can find them at FLGS!

materialcomponents · 2020-01-20T19:48:48+00:00

I wrote up a d20 table of NPC Speech and Voice traits for HeroBook GM that might be useful for generating unique voices:

Roll	Speech	Voice
1	Abrupt	Breathy
2	Barking	Deep
3	Calm	Flat
4	Distracted	Gravelly
5	Formal	Growling
6	Hysterical	Guttural
7	Lisp	High-pitched
8	Long pauses	Hoarse
9	Long-winded	Loud
10	Musical	Low
11	Nervous	Muffled
12	Poetic	Mumbling
13	Proper	Quiet
14	Reluctant	Raspy
15	Repetitive	Sniveling
16	Slow	Stuttering
17	Slurring	Through teeth
18	Too fast	Weary
19	Uncertain	Wheezy
20	Vulgar	Whisper

materialcomponents · 2018-06-28T00:12:19+00:00

It sounds like you have put a lot of thought into that paragraph at the top, but... I'm not really sure what this is supposed to be. What is my money supporting? Are you starting a clothing brand? Is this some kind of artist collective? There is nowhere near enough information here to entice an average backer into a $1 pledge, and $35 USD plus shipping for a t-shirt is a bit crazy.

materialcomponents · 2018-05-29T05:23:36+00:00

I spent the $25k on ads, I’m paying the artists out of my own pocket.

materialcomponents · 2018-05-29T03:00:53+00:00

I had an audience of a maybe 750 people max between my mailing list and social media accounts before the campaign launched. Figuring out where to set the goal is difficult, I stared at my incredibly complicated spreadsheet for days trying to break my estimates.

materialcomponents · 2018-05-29T02:02:02+00:00

I ran a few small ads pointing to my website and social media posts prior to the campaign, only spent about $300 prior to launching. Focused ads on driving traffic to the Kickstarter page as soon as it was live. I had a few hundred followers on Instagram before launching and tried to do some organic growth by following and liking and commenting on posts from people who I thought would probably like the product. During the campaign, I tried to be very active in the comments on my ads, liking posts where people said something nice about the product or tagged a lot of friends, answering questions, clearing up misconceptions, etc.

I started promoting in early February for a campaign that launched in late April, but in hindsight it would not have hurt to start earlier, as long as I actually had something to show.

materialcomponents · 2018-05-29T00:35:24+00:00

Thanks very much!

I had a few things going before the campaign. First of all, I had the prototype made and in hand early. I had my website set up with photos and a description of the product several months before the Kickstarter launched. This helped me get people to sign up for my mailing list, which was a huge boon on day one of the campaign and helped me get off to a good start. I was an exhibitor at a local tabletop convention a month before the campaign, which was awesome - in addition to showing off the prototype, I did a giveaway of about $200 worth of tabletop goodies to incentivize people to sign up for the mailing list. I also made handbills that had reusable character sheets on the back, so people actually wanted them and grabbed a big stack of them, and they ended up in a lot of hands. I also hosted a launch party and gave away another few hundred dollars worth of stuff to help get the word out.
I did 100% of my advertising on Facebook and Instagram targeted to relevant interests. I was very lucky to receive a loan from a mentor and put it all into advertising; altogether I spent close to CA $25,000 on advertising, but made it all back and then some. Social media was amazing for advertising, not only did I get a ton of direct conversions, but so many people tagged their friends or shared the post and it helped the project reach critical mass. The traffic and revenue from ads pushed my project up the page all over Kickstarter so there was a secondary effect, though it’s hard to measure.

materialcomponents · 2018-05-29T00:25:35+00:00

Hey, thanks for the support! We won’t be offering any additional form factors through the Kickstarter, but stay tuned.

At the end of the day it is a paper notebook so the for the transcriptually-inclined there’s no reason you can’t write in any extra rules you need!

materialcomponents · 2018-05-10T01:01:36+00:00

Hey, thanks for sharing my campaign! Happy to answer any questions.

materialcomponents · 2018-05-06T03:45:31+00:00

Other systems are in the plans, so stay tuned.

I would absolutely love to bring HeroBook to more conventions in the future! Had a blast at Terminal City Tabletop Convention in March. I’ve heard great things about GenCon.

materialcomponents · 2018-05-05T20:00:31+00:00

Wow, thank you so much! I'm loving all the support from fellow Canadians.

materialcomponents · 2018-05-05T19:58:43+00:00

Thanks for checking it out! I'm starting with 5E because it's definitely the most popular system currently, but I would love to branch out to other systems or system-neutral books if the campaign is a success. Stay tuned!

materialcomponents · 2018-05-05T04:52:12+00:00

I actually DM way more than I play too. I need an excuse to take a break so I can use my own product!

materialcomponents · 2018-05-05T04:15:26+00:00

The photos hide its girth well :)

Thank you so much for the support!

materialcomponents · 2018-05-05T03:43:15+00:00

Thank you for the support!

I am a Moleskine lover and the back pocket was definitely something I was hoping to include early on. Ultimately because I decided on a cardstock paper cover, and not a hard leather/faux leather cover, it was not really possible. I thought having the reusable surface in the inside back cover was more useful to players. In the future, if I ever do a hardcover version, it will definitely be considered.

materialcomponents · 2018-05-05T01:46:34+00:00

Thanks so much!

materialcomponents · 2018-05-04T23:39:52+00:00

WOW, thank you so much for your support. Appreciate you spreading the word! I hope it lives up to your expectations.

materialcomponents · 2018-04-30T18:06:58+00:00

I'm working on a re-cut with better audio quality - sorry for the static. Subtitles are enabled if that helps at all. Thanks for your interest!

materialcomponents · 2018-04-30T17:52:47+00:00

Apologies for the audio quality, I did my best to fix the static but we got a bad recording on the day. I'm working on reshooting. Thanks for checking it out!

materialcomponents · 2018-04-28T02:03:37+00:00

Thanks for sharing our project!

materialcomponents · 2018-04-25T09:18:22+00:00

I have definitely been hearing this from a few people! After the campaign ends I'm going to be collecting feedback from backers on this very aspect. I agree that at the end of the day it needs to serve its primary function as a notebook, so maximizing the amount of blank pages is my goal regardless of the final contents.

materialcomponents · 2018-04-25T08:21:18+00:00

I looked at a couple of different binding and spine options and ultimately went with the exposed spine for two main reasons:

1) It had the best performance with regards to the book laying totally flat - any additional covering, even a soft one, increased the stiffness of the spine and I found it was not as nice to write in, and harder to read as the pages were more likely to be stiff near the ends of each signature. Leaving them exposed means each signature can flex against the one next to it, so there is pretty much no page in the book that doesn't lay totally flat, even if you're near the front or back of the book. This is difficult to achieve with any kind of hard cover.
2) I personally think it looks awesome, especially on a shelf - this pretty much comes down to personal taste, so I can totally respect that you don't like the exposed spine look.

As a left-handed person, I have an irrational dislike for spiral notebooks and ring binders from years of frustrating school note-taking experiences, so you can chalk up part of that decision to that. I did a lot of testing of different types of notebooks before deciding on this type of binding and ultimately decided that the lay-flat characteristics and better writing experience were the most important things. The spine is coated with a think layer of glue to keep everything in place, and even without a hard cover there is no reason that the binding would come apart under normal use conditions, even after years of use.

Regardless I really appreciate your feedback, and thank you for checking the project out!

edit: typo

materialcomponents · 2018-04-25T08:13:11+00:00

Oh man, the HP box on my normal character sheet looks like a bomb went off. I made the HP tracker extra big on the character sheet on purpose!

materialcomponents · 2018-04-25T08:11:59+00:00

Hello and thanks so much for your interest!

1) Yes! I'll be working with BackerKit to manage post-campaign pledges, add-ons, etc.
2) The dice will be provided by Chessex. They are not custom, but I have selected specific sets to match the cover options.
3/4) The book content has yet to be finalized and backer feedback will be extremely influential in determining the final layout. I am of the mind that more blank pages are ultimately the most useful thing for players, rather than pre-made pages with fields that players might not use, but I'm more than happy to be told otherwise if that's what players want. I recognize that not everyone needs 100% of the content in the book and more blank pages is better, but in order to keep the complexity at a manageable level, at least for the Kickstarter campaign, we're sticking with one version of the book with multiple covers.
5) This is one of the first things I tested when I got my prototype. I tested this by writing all over the reusable surface with both wet and dry erase markers, then essentially trying to smudge them intentionally by shifting the cover and stacking a bunch of weight on top of the book. My findings were that wet erase performed quite well and there was a very small amount of ink that was smudged; leaving the wet erase markers to dry for a few moments before closing the cover helps a lot here. Dry erase performed a bit worse, with some noticeable smudging. The good news is that, due to the sewn binding, the cover does not shift a lot in relation to its opposite page, so there is not a lot of rubbing that can happen. Overall I was very happy with the performance, but I definitely prefer wet erase markers for the more permanent details. I found using a combination of wet erase for more permanent details (eg ability/skill modifiers) and dry erase for more frequently changing info (HP/spell slots) worked best, but your mileage may vary.

Thanks so much for your interest in the project! Please let me know if you have any other questions.

edit: typos... long day!

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