Which handout for which scene
A handout is a prop that does a job. Reading a scene out loud tells the players what a character saw; putting a piece of paper in their hands makes them the ones who saw it. These are the ten kinds this site makes, and the scene each one is for.
Things a character is sent
Message — A5, 148 × 210 mm
One page someone is handed: a letter, a warning, a confession, a transmission. The workhorse, and the one to reach for when you are not sure. A title, a body and a signature, in handwriting, typescript, a terminal, a modern email or a diary page — five looks, which is what makes the same structure serve a Victorian letter and a hacked console log.
Best when the sender matters. A letter carries a voice, so it is worth more than an in-character summary exactly when the players should be wondering who wrote it.
Telegram — 210 × 148 mm
Short, clipped, expensive by the word, and impossible to argue with. A telegram is the format for news that arrives too late and too briefly: a death, a summons, a single instruction. Its shortness is the whole effect — nobody explains themselves in a telegram, so the players have to.
Things a character reads
Newspaper — A4 or A3
A broadsheet front page, with stories you drag between columns. Use it when the world needs to be bigger than the scene: the players came for one story and the other four on the page tell them what else is happening in town. It is also the best way to plant a clue nobody is looking for yet, because a front page is something people skim rather than study.
Print it at A3 when you can. Players spread a newspaper out; they do not hold it.
Mythos Tome — two A5 pages
A book on a shelf, for the Call of Cthulhu family. The first page is what the investigators see and can read; the second is the Keeper's — what studying it costs in time and Sanity, and what it teaches. The two pages export separately, which is the point: hand over the first, keep the second.
Menu — A5
A tavern's board, a dining car's card, a ration list. Quietly one of the most useful props there is, because a menu is a list of prices, and a list of prices is a setting explaining itself without a single line of exposition. What is expensive, what is out of stock and what the locals eat says more than a paragraph of description.
Things a character is shown
Poster — A4
A wanted notice, a proclamation, a recruitment bill, a missing person. A poster is public, which makes it different from everything else here: it is not addressed to the players, they are just the ones standing in front of it. Good for putting a face on a threat, and better for the moment a player recognises the face.
Official Form — A4
A police report, a permit, a requisition, a case file. Bureaucracy is a genre of horror in its own right, and a form makes an institution real in a way a description cannot — boxes someone had to tick, a stamp someone had to get. Use it when the obstacle is not a monster but a process.
Things a character carries
Identity Card — 86 × 54 mm
An ID, a pass, a badge, a guild membership, the size of a bank card. Two uses: give one to each player at the start and the party is documented, which changes how they behave at checkpoints; or give one to the party and it belongs to a stranger, which is a mystery with a face on it.
Ticket — 150 × 62 mm
A train ticket, a boarding pass, a cloakroom stub, a receipt. The smallest prop and often the sharpest, because a ticket is evidence: it puts a named person in a named place on a named date, and it does it without anyone claiming anything. A stub in a dead man's coat is a scene.
Reference Card — 63 × 88 mm
Poker size, nine to an A4 sheet. A spell, a condition, an item, an NPC — any system. This is the one handout that is not fiction: it is a rules aid, and its job is to stop the table looking things up. Make a card for every status effect your system keeps forgetting and the game speeds up measurably.
Choosing one
The question is not "which handout would be nice here" but "what do I want the players to do with it". A newspaper gets skimmed and shared. A letter gets read aloud by whoever is holding it. A ticket gets examined. A card gets kept. Pick the object whose natural handling is the behaviour you want.
Whichever you pick, the look is a separate choice — the same telegram can be 1920s or Eastern Bloc. That is what styles and settings is about, and printing handouts covers getting it onto paper.