Title. Friend group and I play regularly but most of us are bad at the role playing part of it to the point where it’s hard to tell when the player or the character are speaking in some scenes. Conversations are stiff. We can’t use too heavily modified voices because we’re playing remotely. My character is about to die (probably!) so help me pick a character or trait of my new character that someone not comfortable roleplaying can stick to without feeling weird about it!
Lots of great tips here, but one that works pretty well for my group, is to think of myself less as an actor playing a character, and more like a narrator. Which is to say, I’ll often describe the actions and/or thought process of my character before saying what I think they’ll say (in my normal voice).
This is easiest for mages since cantrips like Prestidigitation become powerful roleplaying tools, but even something like holding a Fire Bolt in the air over the person you’re trying to intimidate can have an interesting affect on the mood of the scene.
Your comment made me realise that this was a key part of my development as a roleplayer - I played a Kenku for a small campaign and I had decided to lean into the mimicry aspect of Kenkus and build myself a phrasebook over the course of the campaign.
This meant that there were many times that I wanted to say something, but the words I had at my disposal either weren’t quite right or not there at all. If I wanted to express my character properly, I needed to describe body language and actions more.