It seems that only when the rare calling is up do you get a catch up renown. For example today it is “Defeat the Powerful Foes in Revendreth” which is to do an epic WQ that reward 250 anima it also rewards me 1 Renown. This is the last one I need to have my latest alt caught up with renown. Earlier this week, there was one for Maldraxxus that also gave 1 Renown as a reward, and that was a similar calling that rewarded the 250 anima. It seems regular callings do not offer renown.
The cavate does seem to be that if you turn in the weekly souls or anima quest you will not be offered the renown as a calling reward, the game will think you are caught up if you turn in the two weeklies too soon.
When I am catching up with renown, I usually wait to turn in the weeklies until Monday before reset on Tuesday. That way I am sure to be able to have all the renown I need (I don’t BG often and rarely Raid or do Dungeons).
You can check the rewards on calling quests to see if it will give renown, you don’t have to do them to find out.
I don’t know how it’s determined if calling quests will give renown or not, but the way catchup vs weekly renown goes is that catchup can get you up to the previous week’s cap. Which means if you were behind this week, spammed whatever and got enough renown to hit 28, you could then do this week’s 2 weeklies and hit 30 and be totally caught up — BUT if you completed those 2 weeklies prior to 28, you’ll still only be able to get catchup up to 28, so you’ll have to “fix” it the next week.
I don’t think even the devs could explain their own rules. Early on in the catchup it stops giving catchup renown unless you have done the souls quest. I think also you can’t get catchup renown whilst you are holding a storyline quest. Later in the catchup process you can hamstring yourself by doing the weeklies too early.
It feels like the devs have created so many rules around the edge cases that they’ve run themselves round in circles. There is no sense to the rules they’ve implemented.
For me, on five different alts, even after I had completed the weekly “souls” and “1000 anima” quests, the WB and purple callings always gave a renown token until I was within 2 ranks of that weeks cap.
It’s not random. Through observation from my alts, I’ve figured out that some parts through the campaign you will be at a point that says for example “Earn Renown 22 to continue the campaign.” and when it shows that message in your quest log, the next calling quest that you accept will also reward a renown. I’m not sure how it works after you finish the campaign, but I’m assuming that it will only allow you to get the renown from a calling quest if you are within 2 of the max renown currently available and haven’t completed your weekly quests yet.