Service Awards

As a “thank you” for DM’ing, organizing, and other service to the community, you can use Service Awards to reward yourself.

The most current document is the D&D Adventurers League Service Rewards document. You can find it at 📄Documents. Version 2026.1 renamed it from “Service Awards” and replaced “seasons” with an annual start date. Rewards can be assigned to characters in the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Dragonlance, and Ravenloft campaigns.

Earning Hours

You can earn hours by performing certain tasks outlined in the Service Rewards document. The types of tasks that earn you hours are listed under “Service Types”. Partial hours count too: 30-59 minutes is rounded up to one hour.

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 earn one hour per hour spent as DM. This also covers preparation time, running “Session Zeroes”, and mentoring new DMs during their sessions.

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 earn one service hour per hour of producing an AL actual play or an informative podcast or video (e.g. AL rules discussions, adventure spotlights, or event coverage), as a DM or as a player. The stream needs to be to a publicly accessible target, such as YouTube or Twitch, and must remain available to watch after the live stream. Streaming to a private stream or Discord server does not count.

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

Streaming players can add 1 hour per session with safety tools, and 1 hour per new AL player in the session. DMs, event organizers, and staff instead claim those bonuses under Dungeon Mastering and Organizing.

Organizing

Event organizers (EOs) and event staff earn 40 service hours per day (or partial day) of a public event with two or more tables (usually at least eight players and two DMs). This covers duties like planning, scheduling, reserving, setting up, and managing; staffing hours exclude time spent DMing (earn those under Dungeon Mastering).

You can also add 1 hour per session if every DM at the event discussed and implemented safety tools with their players, and 1 hour per new AL player in your sessions.

Dungeoncraft and Posting

Two smaller service types for writers and promoters:

• Dungeoncraft: 1 hour for every two DMsGuild reviews you write, or respectful notifications of errors in an adventure (with cited guidance).
• Posting: 1 hour for every four social platforms, servers, or groups you post AL content to (e.g. the official D&D Discord server, your Facebook group, an applicable subreddit, and BlueSky).

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”: rewards you earn for reaching milestones while performing a service, without spending any service hours.

Each achievement lists a sequence of rewards. The first time you reach it, you earn its first reward; the next time, its second reward; every time after that, its repeatable (∞) reward. Most achievements let you pick between service hours or a “Rewards by Rarity” item of a given rarity.

Some achievements are marked “Retroactive”: if you met one in the past and have verifiable documentation (e.g. “my first adventure, published 8/1/17”), you can claim its reward now. Without documentation, you can earn its reward the next time you perform the task, even if that achievement isn’t repeatable and it isn’t your first time doing the task.

Achievements are grouped by service type: Dungeoncraft (e.g. fixing an error in your published adventure within three weeks), Dungeon Mastering (e.g. mentoring a new DM, running a learn-to-play, DMing an entire book, DMing with less than 4 hours’ notice), Organizing (e.g. running learn-to-plays at your event, growing attendance, organizing your first charity event), and Additional Service (e.g. helping players who ask for it, contributing to a code of conduct).

Redeeming Awards

When you want to redeem your earned hours for awards, you “spend” your earned hours on the rewards. Each redemption also comes with one level for any of your characters, plus gold or downtime days (your choice):

• Common or Uncommon items: costs 5 hours (10 downtime days or 250 gp)
• Rare items: costs 10 hours (20 downtime days or 2,500 gp)
• Very Rare items: costs 20 hours (30 downtime days or 10,000 gp)
• Legendary items: costs 40 hours (40 downtime days or 25,000 gp)
• Repeatable (∞) rewards: costs 40 hours each time (50 downtime days or 50,000 gp)

You may redeem a rarity for an item of that rarity or lower. Level advancement is optional (ALPG), and the level may go to a different character than the one receiving the reward.

For each rarity, there are a limited number of awards: several “campaign-available magic item” choices, some preset items (mostly from the DMG), and a few special options. Two kinds of special options cost double:

• “Steeping” (double cost): upgrade the steep of one of your Fizban’s Treasury “Hoard Magic Items” by one step. See 🐲Fizban’s “Steepable” Hoard Magic Items.
• “Unique” rewards (double cost): bespoke items and creatures only found in this document, such as the Living Book familiar or a Giant Fennec Fox companion.

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)

Identically named items must come from different campaign-available sources: choose the DMG’s Javelin of Lightning, then a second Javelin of Lightning from an adventure, a third from a different adventure, and so on. After a full reset (see below), you may choose the same item from the same source again.

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. After running an adventure, you may exchange your session time service hours from that session for the same rewards that one of your players earned from that adventure. Only session time is exchanged: your prep, new player, and safety tool hours remain yours to keep and spend.

• You get the same rewards that one of the played characters received (magic items, gold, story awards, level, etc.)
• The character you assign these rewards to must be in the same campaign, and be of the same tier or higher than the player’s character (e.g. if your player’s character was T1, you may assign the rewards to one of your T1 or higher characters).
• The adventure must be one your character hasn’t played before, and you may assign one adventure’s rewards to a given character only once (even if your character later plays that adventure and would earn different rewards).
• The rewards must follow the same guidance your players follow (ALPG); they cannot come from unpublished author-only adventures or Official Support Kit epics.
• Level advancement is optional (ALPG), or may be given to a different character.

Saving Hours and Resetting

• As a general rule, unspent hours do not roll over: hours earned while a version of the document is in effect must be redeemed from that document. Use them or lose them.
• Exception: up to 40 saved service hours may be transferred from one version of the Service Rewards document to the next.
• Before starting a new document version, if you have only 1-4 unassigned hours left, you may redeem them for one non-Unique Common or Uncommon reward from either version.
• If you choose every reward (excluding “Steeping” rewards, but including at least one each from “Achievements”, “Adventure Rewards”, and the repeatable rewards) before the next version’s start date, you may start over and choose from all the rewards in the document again.

Service Awards Tracking

Keep an accurate log of your service hours and redeemed rewards (the document’s Service Log, Appendix A), and record your rewards and certificates on your character’s logsheet. See 📝Logging Your Adventures for logging conventions and community sample logs.

If you don’t want to use the print version, a form-fillable PDF is available alongside it at 📄Documents, and 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