My goal is to write stories that are connected, but not sequels in any meaningful sense. Like Howard's Conan tales or Leiber's Fahrrd & the Great Mauser stories.

Shared world has done some world building and brings (in the case of FR and SW) a big audience. With your own work, you're more creatively free. In a way, the shared world stuff has a high floor but a ceiling.

My goal is to write stories that are connected, but not sequels in any meaningful sense. Like Howard's Conan tales or Leiber's Fahrrd & the Great Mauser stories.

I like to keep the world, to some degree, an implied setting.

Fantasy allows for less rigorous worldbuilding and more vigorous exploration of moral questions. Sci-fi is opp.

I loved The Weird (one of the stories in it inspired Blackalley in Discourse).

The Sundering is a world spanning event that creates ripples all across the Realms. The books in the series are connected in that they take place against that backdrop, showing different aspects of it. The stories, however, are not sequels or intertwined, though there are some Easter Eggs across books.