This installment of New Player’s Guide is a little bit more casual than usual. That’s because I’m talking about a specific element of my home D&D campaign that I think will improve yours, rather than sharing broad wisdom that I’ve learned over the years. Let’s talk about handouts!

First, Some Backstory

A few weeks ago, some of my players delved into the Underdark-like caverns beneath the Isle of the Dawn, the island fortress-city that my current campaign is based out of. This campaign draws heavily from the lessons on running urban adventures I learned writing and playing Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, but there’s one lesson that I’ve learned more recently. It seems self-evident, but I missed it completely while running Waterdeep: give the characters ample opportunity to leave the city on short excursions. This adventure could take them into the dangerous caverns below the paved streets, or it could involve them getting on a boat and sailing to the mainland for some more typical fantasy adventures before returning to their home base.

(What about handouts? We’re getting to it—this set-up is important.)

One challenging aspect of running an urban adventure is handling information. It’s easy enough for folklore and oral legend to be the only information available to adventurers while they’re investigating ancient tombs out in the wilderness. But when your adventure hooks tend to start in the big city—especially in a city like mine, where the characters have easy access to a well-maintained monastic library—the DM has to be ready to prepare information ahead of time.

Obviously, you can always do what DMs do best: improvise lore as necessary and fly by the seat of your pants. But if you want to wow your players with your masterful presentation and attention to detail, one easy way to do so is to create handouts. These handouts are invaluable tools for the DM who has planned out an adventure for the players and really wants them to commit to that adventure. For example, in my campaign, the heroes delved into the caverns beneath the isle because they needed silk produced by carrion crawlers in order to craft a garment of the finest pride silk—a material stolen and adapted from Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount.

Once they learned about the silk, they decided that they didn’t want to go into this situation without doing proper recon. (If your players aren’t interested in doing recon, there’s not much you can do about it. However, if they don’t know that researching dungeons and caverns and creatures is an option, suggest it to them! You could be subtle and have a friendly NPC tell them in-character, but you don’t have to be. Just telling your friends “hey don’t forget you can do research” is a perfectly valid approach.)

They didn’t know jack about carrion crawlers or their habitat, so they went to the monastery’s library and did some research. That’s when I unveiled the handout: a two-page document I’d written in the voice of a scholar of the isle, detailing not just the whys and wherefores of carrion crawlers, but also other creatures that are known to share their habitat. Here’s that handout (if blurry, click to zoom in):

What I Like About this Handout

This handout was effective for me and my group. I won’t call it universally applicable, but there are things about it that served me well, and that I think will serve you well, too.  

In-World Knowledge. Lore dumps aren’t usually very fun. The DM monologuing to the players tends to bore them. But turning that monologue into fallible, opinionated, in-world information gives that lore character. Even if, like on this handout, no character is named, it’s clearly written in the voice of a scholar writing an essay on natural philosophy.

The use of line-art sketches on this document (created by the masterful Brynn Metheney for the Monster Manual) also add to this in-world atmosphere. Full-color art from D&D books are gorgeous, but they have a polished tone that doesn’t quite fit an in-universe document. Use of fonts that mimic handwritten cursive or calligraphy enhances this tone.

Mechanical Knowledge. This handout rewards players that read it carefully. It talks about more than just lore: it gives tips that will help them survive combat encounters. It notes that carrion crawlers like to lair on cavern ceilings and drop upon their prey. It recommends stocking up on antitoxins to avoid their paralytic poison. Some lore can even be used as tactical knowledge; if I describe a room as “smelling of rot and decay,” they might wisely deduce to look up at the ceiling, suspecting that a carrion crawler is nearby.

Roleplaying Information. Even though the ropers mentioned in this document didn’t show up in the adventure they went on, their inclusion provided a sense of suspense and tension. Had a roper appeared, this information would have given them a nonviolent solution to a deadly problem: a roper attack against 3rd-level characters: a rumor that some flesh-hungry ropers are capable of sapient thought and might be swayed to release adventurers if they promise to pay them tribute in the form of treasure or a replacement meal.

How to Make a Great Handout

Your ideal handout is probably rather different from mine. You’ll include different varieties of information, and your handout will serve different purposes. Your handout might depict a tile mural rather than sketches and handwriting on parchment. Nevertheless, these simple graphic design tips will help you create handouts that will help you take your DMing skills to the next level.

Find Good Fonts. This whole handout business is an exercise in aesthetics, so you might as well go hard on the aesthetics of your font. Fonts are expensive as hell, but there are a number of fonts available for free as long as you don’t use them in a commercial project. Google Fonts is a good place to start looking for fonts, but there are dozens of websites out there. Since I subscribe to the Adobe Creative Cloud for work, I make heavy use of Adobe Fonts—but that is decidedly not a cheap resource, unless you’re already a CC user for programs like Photoshop or InDesign.

• BrokenscriptOT Bold is the name of the font I used for the header in my handout
• Avalon Regular is the name of the font I used in the body of my handout

Start with Word. If your handout will include text, like mine did, then there’s no better starting point than Microsoft Word—or an equally powerful word processor. Google Docs is okay, but you can’t use custom fonts like you can on app-based word processors. It also easily allows you to wrap text around images. To do this:

• Select the image
• Go to “Picture Tools: Format” on the top ribbon
• Click “Position” and choose any alignment. Now you can move the picture wherever you want to move it!
• Click “Text Wrap.” I like the Tight positioning, but play around with things until you find a setting you like

Use the Art on D&D Beyond. If your handout calls for it, like mine did, there’s so much monster art available on D&D Beyond that you’ll never be able to use it all. The Monster Manual has a number of bits of sketchy concept art in it, like I used in this handout. They’re only for a select few monsters, though, so choose your monsters carefully. For instance, I chose carrion crawlers as the main monster of this quest specifically because D&D Beyond had sketchy art of one available.  

Export as PDF. If you’re playing digitally, it’s vital that you save your document as a PDF and not a DOCX (or whatever your word processor’s file type is) because you’re probably using fancy, non-standard fonts that will break on your friends’ computers. If you’re playing in person and printing your handout, there’s no need to worry about that—but the final step will require you to save it as a PDF anyway!

Get a Textured Background. If you’re creating a handout that features words written on paper (or carved into stone, wood, etc.), then your handout will look much better if you apply a textured background! Usually, lighter backgrounds are better because standard black text appears more legibly on them, as you can see in the written handouts in Curse of Strahd. For paper handouts, let me recommend assets by Critical Role and Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount cartographer Deven Rue! Her “Digital Paper” assets are high-quality scans of real paper that she’s made herself. They’re available to her Patreon patrons.

Deven’s fantasy paper assets come highly recommended because of their impressive resolution. There’s no guarantee that assets you find on the internet will be the size you need, and stretching too-small assets will often make them look blurry or otherwise unpleasant. Other textures (like cloth, stone, wood, etc.) are harder to find, but I have faith that you can find them on the internet!

Assemble it in GIMP. This step may require you to download a program you’ve never used before, but it’s highly worth it. GIMP is a free image-manipulation software available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It’s not quite as powerful as Photoshop, but it will work fantastically for our purposes.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed GIMP, run the program without opening a new document. Now, drag the PDF you created earlier into the window. This will open up a window asking you how you'd like to import your PDF; all you need to do is make sure your page resolution is set to 300 pixels per inch and select Import. If you select a lower resolution, your original document will get blurry. This will turn your PDF into an image file that you can manipulate in GIMP. If your PDF has more than one page (mine has two, for instance), it will open each page as a separate layer. You can click the “eye” icon in the Layers pane to hide or show layers.

Now, drag whatever paper texture you found into the document. If it’s a horizontal image, you may want to rotate it one-quarter turn by right-clicking on the image, going to Layer, going to Transform, and going to Rotate 90 degrees Clockwise.

Now that you have a vertical page texture, right click on the image again. Then go to Layer and click on Scale Layer. Click on the “chain link” icon so that it looks like a broken chain link. This stops the picture from scaling proportionally. Now change the units to Inches and enter 8.5 in the width box and 11 in the height box. Click Scale and your paper texture will now be the exact size of your PDF pages.

Go to your paper texture in the Layers pane and right click on its layer. Select “Add Alpha Channel”. This will give that layer a transparent background. Now, click the “eye” button on that layer to turn it invisible so that you can see the text and images on your original document. Go to the toolbox on the left side of your screen and click on the Free Select Tool. Click on the image and draw a rough rectangle around your text and images, like you’re creating a border around your text. It doesn’t have to be perfect; in fact, a few imperfections will make it look more natural.

Once you’ve connected the beginning of your free-select line and the end of the line, click the Rectangle Select tool in the toolbox. This will select the region you’ve outlined. Now that you have an area selected, right click on the image, go to Select, and click Feather. Set your feathering to 100 (this is a value you can play around with to your personal taste). Now, click the “eye” button on your paper texture layer. Then right click on the image, go to Edit, and click on Clear (or hit the Delete key on your keyboard). This will erase the feathered selection, creating a parchment textured border that gently fades to white.

Now, right click on your freshly edited page texture in the Layers pane and select Duplicate. Arrange your layers so that one page texture is above page 1 of your document, another is above page 2, and so on for all the pages in your handout. Now right click on your topmost page texture and click Merge Down. This will combine your outline and your page. Do this for all of your textures. Now you’re ready to export your PDF.

Go to File and click on Export As. Make sure that your filename has “.PDF” at the end. When you click export, make sure the “Layers as Pages” and “Reverse Page Order” boxes are checked. Voila! Now you have a beautiful handout with the aesthetic illusion of being written on fantastical, aged paper while still having all the clarity of being printed in black and white. Even better, this method saves a TON of ink if you’re printing it out, compared to printing a fully textured page.

Have you ever created handouts for your players before? Share some of your creations in the comments!

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James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, and the Critical Role Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, a member of the Guild Adepts, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and other RPG companies. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his fiancée Hannah and their animal companions Mei and Marzipan. You can find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.