[RPG] How do the Zhentarim communicate with their agents and what support can they provide

Legendary Dude is right, in that the nature of Curse of Strahd doesn't lend itself well to prospectively breaking it into "episodes" or "adventures." It's designed for the players to be able to meander along their own path, following such leads as they like.

But we've got lots of data from other AL materials to inform a scheme. Specifically, I tabulated the downtime and renown rewards from the twenty-three (mostly seasons 2 & 3) Expeditions modules I had on hand. These included five 1-hour adventures, eight 2-hour adventures, and ten 4-hour adventures.

All of the 1- & 2-hour adventures rewarded 5 downtime days. One 4-hour adventure also rewarded 5 downtime days, while the other nine rewarded 10 downtime days.

Most (18 of 23) modules reward 1 renown point to any faction member participating.^* 13 of those 18 also conditionally reward another renown point to members of some specified factions. On average, it works out just over 1 2/5 renown points available per 4-hour adventure.

Summing this all up, AL practices would indicate the following scheme:

Award 10 downtime days per 4-hour session. Award one renown point to all faction members per 4-hour session. (Story-)conditionally award another renown point to members of 2 factions, on average, per 4-hour session. (And spread the love among the factions.)

Personally, I think that's too complicated. I've gone over to "rewarding" downtime as real time. That is, for every day that passes in real life my players earn a downtime day. (That way they've got more to play with when we have to miss a session!) I also think that's way too much renown--remember that the Expeditions format contemplated casual less-than-every-week play, the likelihood that a player would be using different characters week to week, &c. I would recommend dropping the "flat" 1 renown per session, and just stick to 2 or 3 conditional ones, as it makes sense in the story.

So, my best recommendation, after a few years of running AL games:

Award downtime as above, or as real time. Award renown points to two or three factions-worth of players, conditioned on meeting story "goals" keyed to each faction, per session.

^{* - the five that don't are the five linked 1-hour adventures. Each of these are aligned to a different faction and reward members of that faction 1 renown point at its completion. In other words, if we consider these as one 5-hour adventure, it's another one which gives all faction members 1 renown point.}

Probably the simplest way of thinking about this reduces down to four basic scenarios, two of which we'll be able to eliminate immediately.

• The players and the GM both think the GM is doing a good job.
• The players think the GM is doing well, but the GM doesn't.
• The players and the GM both think the GM is doing a bad job.
• The players think the GM is doing poorly, but the GM doesn't.

The first two, assuming you are speaking for the entire group, are almost certainly untrue. (The second one seems a little odd, but I've seen it happen. We all know GMing can be hard work, and issues of introversion, stage fright, etc can cause anxiety in the GM even though the players are all fine with the GM's job.)

So the first part of helping to fix this is to figure out which of the second two cases you are actually in. I see signs of both in your description. "you know...a lot about them," seems like something most GMs, even beginners, would realize as an inadequate answer in one sense or another. On the other hand, "Outside of game he seems really excited about his story," possibly suggests that he thinks everything is going fine.

In my experience, people who want to do something well, and realize that they aren't, may be more receptive to criticism than people who think they are doing just fine, thank you very much. The latter case may involve shattering some illusions.

Another important thing to realize is that people get better at things due to experience (which this GM manifestly does not have a lot of) due to research (which you have done but this GM probably has not, as he is new at this) and due to constructive criticism and helpful feedback. Especially in a performative art like GMing, it is hard to know if you are really hitting your target without feedback from the audience, and that feedback is both the GM's responsibility to pick up on, and the players' responsibility to provide, without crushing his ego.

All of that pre-amble leads to a central notion of communicating better with your GM both in-game and out-game, but doing so gently.

In-game, you can do things like:

• Ask for more of what you want to see. But that does mean asking rather than telling. In your example about the bugbears, you started with asking but reverted to filling in details, feeding them to the GM and getting ratification. It'll be awkward, and it can be overdone, but getting these details to flow from the GM instead of you is key.

• In-game, a few mild pointers on mechanics and craft might help, e.g., "Should we really be making those perception checks ourselves? I shouldn't really know my own roll for that, should I?"

• In-game and out-game, as a veteran player and GM who is trying to be a model player, I would try very hard to get myself aligned with what this GM finds interesting. This may very well be confounded by the GM himself, but there may be a dynamic going here, where the GM feels obligated to put filler material (for verisimilitude; for mechanical reasons-- to expend a certain amount of your resources, say; for pacing reasons, etc) but is not actually that interested in it himself. The bugbear example might be a case of that, too-- GM feels obligated to put in filler, you feel obligated to follow up on it, no one is happy.

• Out-game, praise what you like. I cannot say this strongly enough, so I will shout: OUT-GAME, PRAISE WHAT YOU LIKE. Your GM is not a mind-reader and there is no better way to get his attention than just telling him, "Man, when X and Y happened, and you described Z doing W, that was just awesome!"

• Out-game, depending on your answer to the initial question (does he think he's doing well or not) you can always offer to give him a straight-up set of opinions on what went well and what went bad. But it helps immensely to have a feel for how receptive he is to hearing the downsides, and you should be aware that gentleness goes a long way, here.

• Out-game, you can always just ask your GM what parts of the game he finds most interesting, and if there are any things you can do as a player to help focus on the interesting parts.