Online Handouts That Land: How I Make Props Work in TTRPGs

If you play in person, handouts are easy. You slide a crumpled letter across the table, and everyone leans in.

I run two campaigns, each with a party of six. One has been going for four years and the other for four and a half. My players are scattered across England, Wales, Germany, France, India and the US. Posting a prop is not an option. I could not get a letter to arrive at the right moment for everyone at once, and the logistics would be a nightmare.

So handouts go digital. And that, it turns out, has its own problems.

Even digital handouts can go wrong

Early on, I made a treasure map as a journal in Foundry and set the ownership so the players could see it. But I think I had not linked it properly, so nothing told the players there was something new to look at. One player picked up the map in the game, and it dropped into their inventory. Nobody realised I had made a map for them to read.

It wasn’t in the chat, and at the time I couldn’t have put it there even if I wanted to, because of a limitation in the system. It sat in my folder of handouts, unseen, until I realised what had happened and said: “I’ve made a map for you, and here it is.”

I wasn’t as experienced as I am now. But it taught me that a handout the players do not notice might as well not exist. Here are three tips I built from that.

Tip 1: Treat handouts as moments, not files

The difference between a handout and a file is timing. At a physical table, you choose when the letter appears. Do the same online.

One of my favourite examples is a goodbye letter. A player was leaving one of my campaigns, and he was not available for what was meant to be his last session. His character went off to follow a different line of inquiry in another part of the world, still linked to the quest the party were on. Before he left, he wrote to his companions to say he was safe, passed on information he had picked up but not yet shared, told them to be careful and wished them well.

I had to tell the party that this player would not be coming back, so I timed it for the end of the session. I handed over the letter as both a parting gift and a natural place to stop. It was bittersweet, because they liked the character and the player. But they were glad to have the letter, and one of the players read it out loud to the rest of the party, even though they all had access to it. That was a lovely touch.

It was a good exit for the player and the character both, and it worked because the letter arrived at a chosen moment, as a gift, not as a file in a folder.

Tip 2: Make it something they can touch

A handout does not have to be text. Because the table is digital, you can make a handout do things.

In one campaign, the party ended up in the Land of Dragons, trying to solve a murder. I built the city of Dragon Show as an interactive map. The players could click on the market, and the market scene would open. From there they could click on specific shops. Clicking the inn took them inside, to a scene that worked like a little diorama.

The shops had two options. Players could open the shop and quickly browse the inventory and buy what they needed. Or they could walk in, and the game would switch to a different scene with the shopkeeper, so they could have an actual bit of roleplay.

I built it in Foundry with Monk’s Active Tiles and Tagger, to make everything work nicely together. It took me ages. But my players were happy to just click on the map and have things happen, and it made exploring a city feel like something they did, not something I described.

You can use the same idea on a smaller scale. Some of my players like to run ahead of the party, so I built an automated trap into a map. When a token crossed a certain area, it sprang on its own. I am, as I may have mentioned, the evil GM.

Tip 3: Show it on screen, then say it out loud

This is the tip my treasure map taught me. Setting a handout to visible is not the same as showing it to people.

In Foundry, “Show Players” brings a journal to the front of the screen for the players you choose, so they can’t miss it. Roll20 has a similar “show to players” button that pops the handout up on their screens. Whether it is a tile, a pop-up or a journal, get it in front of them.

Then describe it. I now call every handout in the game as it appears: “I’ve made something for you, take a look.” It costs five seconds, and it fixes the exact problem I had.

This works for more than documents. I once created a homebrew monster made of magic and shadows, with a curse attached. It first appeared in the middle of a battle. The token arrived on the map, and then I showed the full picture and described it: a large magical abomination, giving off necrotic energy and darkness, with magic sparking everywhere.

My players were terrified. They had already seen how big the token was next to theirs, so they knew it was huge. But a token only tells you so much. Seeing the whole creature, not just a portrait, was far scarier than the token alone, and I think they appreciated the touch. Showing it, then describing it, did more than either would have done separately.

The one physical thing you can share: your dice

Handouts are one half of bringing the table back to online play. The other half is the dice.

That is why we built Dice Link. You do not need gimmicky dice with Bluetooth or anything fancy. You take your own normal dice, roll them in your own tray, and the system reads what they land on. It sends the result to your VTT, so if you roll a D100 and it lands on 74, your VTT is told you rolled a 74. Everyone can see your dice on screen, so you can show off your prettiest dice to the rest of the party, as all dice goblins are wont to do.

There is no random number generator involved. It is your dice and your luck. If you roll a natural 1, you have only yourself to blame. If you roll a natural 20, that is all you too.

Dice Link has a working prototype, and we are in pre-launch, with our Kickstarter launching on 9 February 2027. Sign up to the mailing list for early bird discounts, or join the VIP list for extra special discounts.