Handouts are an important tool for building engagement and immersion in a game ofDungeons & Dragons. The theatre of the mind is most often the main tool a GM has at their disposal, with occasional augmentation from handouts and other tools to prompt the imagination further.
Related:Dungeons & Dragons: Free Map Making Resources
A good handout can take some time and energy to get right, so it is a tool to be used sparingly. Think carefully about the best moments to benefit from that added engagement: pulling people into a first session, bolstering interest in a slower scene focused on roleplay and investigation, or emphasizing the importance of a magic item.
Determine A Goal For Your D&D Handout
There are multiple reasons for wanting to present something in written form instead of reading it aloud, and each will have different design priorities.
Presenting them in different ways can also keep them fresh and allow your players to make the best use of them.
Digital document, saved to the cloud
Physical logbook
A session log is useful for keeping players not present every session up to date. You can do this by having the players keep an in-character journal or logbook. A physical logbook can provide better immersion,while a digital one allows all the players easy access to it.
A physical logbook provides more challenges in organisation but can encourage players to be more studious in taking notes. you may format it similarly to a diary or calendar, andtake inspiration from other forms of logbooks, such as visitor registrations, chess books, andplane or ship logs.
Lore Document
Clean paper handouts with one or two paragraphs
Providing the players with a resource for looking up information can be more engaging than reading out sections of your own notes. Bullet-pointed handouts with the relevant details of a character, place, or item can be prepared ahead of a session andhanded out to the player who passes a history check.
This can also further the roleplaying as the player will be reiterating their perception of the most important details when explaining it to the other players.Encourage them to paraphrase the informationyou provide rather than repeating it verbatim.
Plot Relevant Document
Poster or contractwritten in the style of the setting
A document found by the characters can be presented to the playersas their characters would see it. This can be more immersive than describing the document’s contents or reading it out loud.
A good choice of document for this is one that the players will want to reference back to over time. An intercepted letter may contain references to places and people the players don’t currently know but will be able to understand if they reread it later in the campaign.
Coded note
Partially torn document
Physical puzzle
An investigative party may enjoy working to decrypt a coded message, or failing to solve it out of character may look for a way to help them solve it in character such as a friendly NPC or a decryption tool or spell.
If preparing a damaged handout, have a second copy of the complete document, both for your own notes and in case the party uses a spell or effect to repair it.
Make Your D&D Handouts Part Of The World
A good way of making your world feel lived in is to not have everyone speak and write in the exact same way. Not all GMs are skilled at doing voices, so handouts are a good way to compensate.
If the handout is a document within the world, then have it formatted as the players would find it.
Writing in ye olde English tis a goode option for handouts such as signs and posters, while contracts and formal documents, you can use a calligraphy font to give them that air of nobility.
Incorporating specific slang into a handout can both embellish the characters and provide valuable hints to the players. If you provide your characters a note written in Cockney Rhyming Slang, they might cotton on that they should investigate with the local Thieves' Guild.
Rather than looking unprofessional, tea stains on the papercan give your handout theappearance of old and weathered paperthat seems authentic to a fantasy setting.
If you’re planning for the players to find a partially burned note, then you can(carefully)singe parts of the handout using a small candle or lighter. Tearing the note up and giving the players fragments is another option,but only if they’re the type who’d enjoy piecing it back together.
Handouts can also sprinkle in foreshadowing, hiding key clues under the players' noses. Using an invisible ink to encode a message on top of another document allows the same handout to serve multiple purposes over the course of a campaign.
A mixture of water and vinegar is less well-known than lemon juice and will blend well with yellow or brown paper.
Keep a contingency plan toreward players if they discover the secret messageahead of schedule.
Another interesting way of encrypting a handout is using ascytale: Write your handout on a narrow strip of paper wrapped around a cardboard or wooden tube.
Your players will only be able to decrypt it using a tube of the same size. They may receive the encrypted note and the scytale for reading it from related quests.
Handouts In D&D Don’t Have To Be Written Notes
A big draw of letting the players physically interact with something instead of describing their characters doing it is that you can make use of that physicality. A physical puzzle box found in a charity shop can be much more engaging than describing a far more ornate item in the theatre of the mind.
You can present to the party a seemingly mundane bauble and then have the player who interacts with it the most (either by fiddling with it or by holding onto it while other things are happening) gain some special insight on what turns out to be a magical or cursed item.
Some groups will respond better than others to this method. The puzzle box example might click well for one player who enjoys solving it, but the other players may not enjoy sitting back and waiting for that to happen.
When one player is immersed in trying to solve the puzzle you’ve given them, create roleplay or skill-based tasks for the other players to engage in.
