Ah, yes, thanks for clarifying that. I hadn't realized it until now, but that's probably more of what OP was confused about (edotzaue post suggesting a double open jaw and then me suggesting adding a stopover to it). Basically, my brain parses UA's award tickets as "Put two one-way awards on a single ticket, and we'll let you have a stopover in one direction", since the idea of a double open jaw just feels funny. Since UA's definition of open jaw doesn't obey the usual requirements of an open jaw, I forget that they term things that way.

Does not obey ? How so ?

The above example from UA's site are the two ways I think of an openjaw. In April I booked an award with a stopover and openjaw:
IAD-LAX-SYD(SO), SYD-ZQN(OJ), CHC-SYD-LAX-IAD

What's the alternative/usual requirement ?

RTW alternatives??
 

Since I've knocked this thread off course a bit I'll try to contribute my two cents in the somewhat right direction.

I won't provide examples of precisely what the OP is looking for, and I can't find the past thread or two that I'm thinking of that details my thoughts better than me, but there's the idea to book two RT awards, (ex) 1. NA to SE Asia and 2. SE Asia to NA via Europe ... where the outbounds of 1 + 2 are 1 RTW and the return of 2 + 1 is a second RTW. So basically you get two RTW trips for two RT awards. Booking RTs instead of many OWs allows you to use the often overlooked and very valuable (IMO) stopovers and open jaws.

The big catches here, if you're lucky enough to find availability, would be:
-schedule changes rippling through and causing you to panic/scramble for alternatives
-personal emergencies that might doom the second RTW as schedule changes would probably not be allowed

but if successful, then you'd get two pretty inexpensive RTWs. And complete use of 2 stopovers and 4 open jaws, along with an additional one way, train trip, or road trip or two would give you the lots of possibility.

I was able to price out an award ticket in J saver for 120k miles doing LAX-ICN(open jaw), PVG-BCN(stop), BCN-RDU. I'd have to pay for a one-way from ICN-PVG and for my travels within Europe. It seems according to the 2 open jaw + 1 stopover rule I might be able to save by adding CDG-RDU instead?

Are there any paid alternatives that could be reasonable? I'm 5k miles away from reaching delta gold and have ~13k miles on United, not sure if I can MR since I will be based in PVG from August on. Just pricing stuff on on kayak I got around 2500-3000.

The requirement for an open jaw on a paid ticket with most carriers is that the unflown fare component must be shorter than the two flown fare components. (Excepting the rare fare rule that allows a double open jaw, which is what UA's award offers.) Hence why I said in my DL example that ICN-PVG(stop)-BCN-RDU (connections suppressed) would not be legal, as the unflown bit (RDU-ICN) is longer than BCN-RDU. The destination being SFO tightens up the OJ enough to make it legal. For carriers that only offer round trip pricing on awards, this distance rule must be respected to avoid paying way more for the award. With a double open jaw allowed, there is no restriction like this, since it would not be possible to even say what it might mean. AA also does not speak of open jaws on their awards. Everything is a one-way, but you can put more than one on a single ticket, which is helpful if connecting in a region where AA does not allow a connection and requires a fare break (Asia en route to Oz) or to reduce fees if canceling and redepositing.

Thanks for the 411 mtkeller !