Newspaper handouts for tabletop RPGs

A front page does the exposition nobody wants to sit through. Hand one over, let the table read the headline, and the rumour becomes something the characters found rather than something the game master said.

What goes on the page

The page is a banner across the top and three columns under it, filled from a palette of blocks: a masthead, a lead story with a kicker and a sub-head, articles with bylines and a drop cap, a photograph with a caption, a period advertisement, a column of small notices. Any block can be dragged between the columns until the page balances. Copy that runs long shrinks to fit its box instead of spilling, and a headline that cannot fit at any size is outlined in red so you find out before the printer does.

Five papers, five worlds

The 1920s skin is a broadsheet of the Arkham kind: blackletter masthead, tight leading, advertisements for tonics. Eastern Bloc is a party daily, all heavy slab headlines and grey newsprint. Modern is a contemporary paper for a game set now. Town crier is a hand-press sheet from a fantasy town, with a woodblock masthead, printer’s ornaments and a crier’s proclamation for a lead. Colony feed is a mining colony’s news feed printed off a station terminal, all feed cards, timestamps and a ticker under a stencilled name. A skin changes every typeface and rule on the page and leaves your words alone, so the story can be written first and dated afterwards.

Export is A4 or A3 at 300 DPI, as a PNG or a PDF. A3 is worth the walk to a copy shop for a paper meant to be spread across the table; Printing handouts says which paper to ask for. When the scene wants something pinned to a wall instead of read aloud, use the Poster.