I just completed a RTW where I had done some poor planning in terms of stopovers vs. connections. I had no problems when I made stopovers on two ocassions when the ticket read connection and on two or three more ocassions there were no questions asked when my PNR ended with a connection.

The key here is to have different PNRs and fly different airlines. The closest to any questioning was when a UA agent asked me if I had flown in from Osaka "this morning".

I even called LH about this and they said not to worry about it as long as I don't violate the rules. I.e. exceed 15 or have more than 2 stopovers in one city. I did not do this with my extra stopovers but could probably have gotten away with it.

I don't recommend trying to do illegal stopovers since being caught could lead to big problems. In my case I was just trying to avoid the hassle of reissuing the ticket. It appeared that they would have insisted on the $100 fee despite not changing the rerouting, which I question and another reason to avoid this.