Old Paper / Faded Text

[waldronate]

A bit of paper bleed on the ink might help. Apply a small blur and then use a paper texture as the layer mask. The attached image shows what I got with a few difference clouds to make the background, fibers to make the paper texture, brown text, and a slight outer glow.

[Tear]

I use the same basic steps that waldronate describes.
A slight outer blur on the text to let it bleed into the paper texture and a layer mask to make parts of the text more transparent.
I also usually start with some cloud pattern in the layer mask, but I tend to paint into the mask to make it less random.
I also often use a copy of the text layer on top of the first one, so I can combine multiply with overlay at different opacity settings.

[GameSmith]

Thanks for the suggestions, played round a bit more and got closer to the look I am after. I don't want it to look like fantasy parchment, more like a very old printed map.

[Tear]

I think the same basic rules would apply for printed text.
Here is the same image with a different font and different colors: