cosmere and discworld

[king of nowhere]

i remember an old interview (can't find the link) where sanderson said that the cosmere as a concept was not done before, because while some other authors, like aasimov, worked out later the connections between their books, he is the first -to his knowledge - to have planned those connections from the beginning, planting them from the very first book.

However, I realized that discowrld is a very similar concept; a world where several stories take place, mostly unrelated (or classifiable in a few sagas, like the city watch or the witches), but with some characters interacting from different stories.

II'm wondering if there is some large conceptual difference between the cosmere and discworld or if brandon didn't think about it when releasing the interview.

[Left he/him]

I think that he probably thinks about them quite differently, since there are many single fantasy worlds with multiple storylines that tie together, including Discworld, the Vlademir books by Mercedes Lackey, and Dragon Lance, and others.
I assume that Sanderson is focusing on both the scale, and the huge level of planning that he's put into it, which as far as I know, no else has done.

[Argent he/him]

Yeah, the big difference here is the crossover between different planets, different worlds, not just different books. There is plenty of fantasy where different books in the series explore different regions of the world and different characters.