Service Awards

As a “thank you” for DM’ing, you can use Service Awards to reward yourself.

The most current Service Awards document can be found at 📄Documents.

Earning Hours

You can earn hours by performing certain tasks outlined in the Service Awards document. The types of tasks that earn you hours are listed under “Service Types” in the Service Awards document.

I won’t go into full details about all the tasks, but I will put some notes on some of them here.

Dungeon Mastering

You can earn hours based on the number of hours you act as DM.

Running New Players

While you are DM’ing, if you have any first-time AL players, you can add 1 extra hour earned for each first-time AL player.

Using Safety Tools

If you are using safety tools at your table, you can add an extra 1 hour earned for each session that you DM.

Preparation

Preparing to DM an adventure counts towards your hours. For example, if you spend 2 hours before you do the actual DM’ing to read the adventure, prepare maps, etc., those hours count towards your earned hours.

However, be reasonable about what counts as preparation.

Streaming

You can earn hours as a DM and as a player if your game is streamed. The stream needs to be to a publicly accessible target, such as YouTube or Twitch. Streaming to a private stream or Discord server does not count. The video must remain available to watch after the live stream.

You must also have the active consent of all participants (DMs and players) in order to stream. This is simple etiquette.

Honour System

The Service Awards system, much like most of AL, is based on the honour system. Be honest and please don’t lie about hours you’ve earned.

Achievements

New to version 2026.1 are “Achievements”. These are rewards attainable by performing specific tasks.

Redeeming Awards

When you want to redeem your earned hours for awards, you “spend” your earned hours on the rewards:

• Common or Uncommon items: costs 5 hours
• Rare items: costs 10 hours
• Very Rare items: costs 20 hours
• Legendary items: costs 40 hours

For each rarity seen above, there are a limited number of awards. Some are preset items, and some are “choose your own item”.

When you redeem, you get:

• 1 level for any of your characters
• Gold OR Downtime Days (your choice)
• Magic Item

Campaign-available Magic Item

When you redeem for a “campaign-available magic item”, you can choose a magic item (permanent or consumable) that is in a campaign-available source (according to the ALPG) in the same AL campaign as your character.

Some examples:

• From the DMG (2024 version) - All campaigns
• From an AL-legal adventure - Campaigns in which the adventure is AL-legal
• Sourcebooks and hardcover adventures - Campaigns in which the books are AL-legal

They cannot be:

• Not one of those “Choose an item” type of rewards (such as from Giants of the Star Forge or Keys from the Golden Vault)
• Not an item awarded in a non-available AL epic
• Not a Greater Fey Pact item (these are in WBW-DC adventures)
• Not a Story Item (these are in official hardcover adventures)

You may not chose the same item from the same source more than once a Service Awards “season”.

Adventure Rewards

Previously known as “Gain Rewards As If You Had Been a Player”

This award is similar to the old “Season 9” way of rewarding DMs.

When you DM an adventure, you may opt to not collect any of the earned hours. Instead, you may choose to give the rewards of that adventure to one of your characters.

• You get the same rewards that the actual played characters receive (magic items, gold, story awards, level, etc.)
• The character you assign this award to must be eligible to play the adventure (eg. you cannot assign the rewards of a T1 adventure on a T2 character).

New Service Awards Seasons Are a Full Reset

• As a general rule, unspent hours do not roll-over to the next “season”. Use them or lose them.
• You can choose the same item from the same adventure that you may have chose in previous seasons.

Service Awards Tracking

If you don’t want to use the PDF, a community member has created a website to help track Service Awards.

Service Award Tracker This website allows you to track your service awards for the Adventurers League and share them with others. sei.to