Designer Accolades

Accolades are badges you earn for what you actually do on Dustin's Designer Den: holding playtests with real people, building your games, supporting the Den, and taking part in design competitions. They appear on your designer profile for anyone to see.

How they are awarded

Accolades are awarded automatically. Most are checked once a night, so something you do today usually shows up by the next morning.
Contest accolades arrive sooner: as soon as an organizer publishes the finalists or the final results, and, for Community Favorite, as soon as community playtesting closes.
An accolade you have earned stays earned. If your numbers later go down, for example because you delete a project, you keep it.
The DDD team can take an accolade away from an account that broke the rules to earn it.

Where they appear

Your accolades are listed in the Accolades section of your designer profile. Up to three also appear in your profile header: contest titles and team awards first, then your highest tiers.

Other people only see your accolades when your designer profile is public. You always see your own, along with Show the ones to earn, which lists the accolades you do not have yet and, where there is a number to reach, how close you are.

Hiding an accolade

Under each of your accolades there is a Hide link. A hidden accolade no longer appears to anyone but you, and Show it puts it back. Den Patron starts hidden, because it shows that you pay for Pro. It only appears on your profile if you choose Show it.

Tiers

Some accolades grow as you go. They have tiers, in this order: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond.

The dots under the badge show how many tiers it has and how many you have reached. Your profile shows the highest tier you have earned.

Contest accolades are different: you earn one for each competition, and your profile shows how many (for example ×3) with links to the competitions.

Contests

Badge	Accolade	How to earn it
	Contest Champion	Place 1st in the official results of a design competition.
	Podium Finish	Place 2nd or 3rd in the official results of a design competition.
	Placed	Win any awarded place below 3rd in a design competition.
	Finalist	Have an entry chosen as a finalist by the judges.
	Community Favorite	Have the highest community rating in a competition when community playtesting closes.
	Contest Judge	Judge a design competition through to its published results.
	Contest Host	Run a design competition through to its published results.

Competitions hidden by the DDD team do not award accolades. A judge the organizer excused before the results were published does not receive Contest Judge.

How the Community Favorite is decided

When community playtesting closes, the entry with the highest average community rating wins, as long as it has enough ratings. How many it needs grows with the size of the competition: one rating for every 3 entries, never fewer than 3 and never more than 10. So a competition with 9 entries needs 3 ratings, one with 21 entries needs 7, and one with 30 or more entries needs 10.

Only visible ratings count, and only for entries still in the competition. If two entries tie, the one with more ratings wins, and after that the one entered first. The result is decided once, when community playtesting closes, and does not change afterwards. If no entry has enough ratings, there is no Community Favorite for that competition.

Playtesting

Accolade	How to earn it	Tiers
Playtest Host	Hold qualifying playtests of your games.	1, 10, 50, 150 qualifying playtests
Crowd Puller	Playtest your games with different real players.	10, 50, 150, 500 different players
Regular	Hold at least one qualifying playtest every month, months in a row.	3, 6, 12, 24 months in a row
Busy Month	Hold 8 qualifying playtests in one calendar month.	Earned once for each month you do it

What counts as a qualifying playtest

A playtest is one continuous session in a playtest room for one of your games. When a room goes quiet for more than 30 minutes, the next activity in it starts a new playtest. It counts as qualifying when all of these are true:

You took part. You were in the room and did something in it. A shared link or public setup that other people played without you does not count for you.
At least one real player joined you. A real player is another signed-in member who was in the room with you for at least 15 minutes and made at least 10 moves (moving the cursor, editing snap points, and joining or leaving do not count as moves).
The other player is not a second account of your own.

Guests who play without signing in are welcome at your table, but they never count toward accolades. Crowd Puller counts each real player once, however many of your playtests they join.

Supporter

Badge	Accolade	How to earn it	Tiers
	Den Patron	Stay subscribed to a paid Pro plan without a break.	3, 6, 12, 24, 36 months in a row

Only time you have actually paid for counts, so a free or fully discounted Pro plan does not. A yearly plan counts month by month as the year goes by. A gap of up to 14 days between one paid period and the next, for example while a failed payment is sorted out, does not break your run. Den Patron starts hidden (see Hiding an accolade).

Building

Accolade	How to earn it	Tiers
Component Builder	Create components across your projects.	25, 100, 500, 2000 components
Rulebook Author	Add a rulebook to one of your projects.
Published Prototype	Make one of your saved table setups public.

Community

Accolade	How to earn it	Tiers
Critic	Rate and review design competition entries.	10, 50, 150 reviews
Resource Contributor	Have a community resource you submitted approved.
Idea Implemented	Have one of your suggestions marked implemented.
Veteran	Be a member of the Den.	1, 2, 3, 5 years

Critic counts your community ratings on competition entries. A rating that an organizer hid does not count.

Special

Badge	Accolade	How to earn it
	Founding Member	Awarded by the DDD team to members who helped shape the Den early on.
	Staff Pick	Awarded by the DDD team for an outstanding design or contribution.

These two cannot be earned automatically.