Відео

1:20 Swap out "religion" for "government" to cringe. Swap it out for "Whole Foods" to laugh.

FateForge!!! BlaneBreaker!!! Drakkenheim!!!

@worldbuildingsage your video is very excellent and I do love gour example you showcased. Personally, I still don't have a lot of ideas regarding family and power structure, however, regarding gender roles, an idea part of worldbuilding in the future would to actually have no-discrimination based on gender &sex nor by sexuality, where sexism & heteronormativity never existed nor is it an issue and I would love your advice on hiw can I show it through family and power structures, as well as other apsects.

Only played/ran homebrew until now, but truly fallen in love with Eberron and can't wait to play that one!

The best one is absolutely OBVIOUS. It's the one YOU as the DM, and the players, like to adventure in the most.

Idk why algorith hates you for some reason but keep up the good work

Not a major war, but one of the more entertaining in my fiction. Nation O discretely begings paying ethnic rebels in Nation A to steal oil destined to Nation E. Nation A is neutral in world affairs, but has strong trade with Nation E, to secure it's Interests in Nation A, Nation E provides military equipment to Nation A to combat these oil bandits. Nation E can't prove Nation O is funding terrorism & piracy, since all the weapons Nation O provides to the rebels are commercially available. Not to mention Nation E & Nation O are in opposing military alliances, and both desire to avoid sparking a large cross-continental war. Thus this proxy war continues to go on for years as Nation E & Nation O keep funding their proxies inside Nation A. Literal oil small wars, because you don't want to spark a bigger, more costly war.

bro put my 2 fovorite settings in S! Respect+

I actually have a mostly undeveloped mini-world, where due to the ‘mini’ aspect I plan to develop mostly the sexuality portion and occasionally add in religion and culture

I actually have a mostly undeveloped mini-world, where due to the ‘mini’ aspect I plan to develop mostly the sexuality portion and occasionally add in religion and culture

Was the Ottoman empire evil? Was the Mongol empire evil? Or is it just European empires that are evil?

I know that it's a bit different to what you usually do, but I would love if you made a video about how to adapt ideas into worldbuilding and making them unique. For example, my world has an empire that I've based off of Noxus from Arcane and I'm unsure if I've made it unique enough. I also have a society of nomadic horse riding half-elves, but I don't know if they seem too similar to the Mongols, or the Game of Thrones Dothraki or the Tairnadal/Valenar elves of Eberron. On a related note, a video about nomads or horse cultures could be very interesting.

My world weirdly has like, three monarchs out of dozens of nations. (Used to be four, fourth got tortured to death by Changelings and his nation imploded in on itself thanks to said Changelings). The most powerful ruler of my world *is* a classical philosopher king, (his country is very Greek inspired after all) and his main schtick is that he’s a ruthless moral paragon. His goals are benevolent, he sees racial prejudice as both evil and in efficient, after all, he’d rather have the shapeshifters and super strong fire breathing elves on his side, rather than face the fate of the last king who pissed them off. So he bans prejudice, harshly, if you can be proven to discriminate, you can get locked up, executed if you’re in a position of power. Are you arguing against his goals of democracy(very long-term) and equality? Then you’ll be assassinated. He wants to turn his country into a utopia, his plans, if fulfilled, very well could. But anyone deemed a problem gets taken off the board instantly. These aren’t good people he’s killing, but it’s problematic. And shows a great flaw: he’s very much so “ends justifies the means”, seemingly without limit. So if he gets in his head that something more problematic is necessary, e.g. conquering the other nations to spread the enlightenment of his own nation, he could go from ruthless paragon to ruthless tyrant very fast.

its only been 16 hours but this is very good an deserves more attention nice an easy to follow along, good job

A guillotine

The first thing one should do is define which "good" one is aiming for. It is important to recognize the differences between the definitions of "good," one of which pertains to morality and the other to effectiveness. Of course, there is still the matter of what one might consider to be moral/effective good, and that can get very complex very quickly, but it is still important to start here when writing; just be prepared to change your mind on certain details, especially if you are trying to learn as much as you can about what you might want to see happen for yourself (e.g. how does a ruler, monarch or not, enact a beneficial policy that you want while/after dealing with a system that may not allow for such?). To be fair, you do not need to flesh this out completely or even in a particularly realistic way - you can just start writing and figure things out as you go - but just keep this in mind. Personally speaking, how a good ruler came to be can be comparatively easier to write. A war hero is arguably the easiest route, and there is plenty of merit in this. Of course, as alluded in the video, this will not necessarily translate to good rulership - it can, but it might not. It really depends on what you want to establish for this ruler. One thing to bear in mind, though, is that absolutely no ruler rules without some manner of advising. This is why the evil adviser trope is a thing. Good advisers are just as vital as good rulers. Yes, you can just make your ruler omniscient and therefore not need any advisers. but speaking for myself at least, that gets boring mighty quickly. It kind of relates to the scene from _Adaptation,_ the one where Robert McKee yells about all stories revolving around some kind of conflict/struggle. Of course, if you want to create a moral/effective good omniscient ruler, you are more than welcome to try; just be aware that it will be like going for the hardest difficulty run in a Devil May Cry game. In my world (and I have talked about many times in this channel's comments, so I'll skip a lot of other details), the ruling goddess-queen had originally waged a divine war against her kind, and she did so to protect mortals (humans, elves, etc.). While she was not the only one to express desire to protect mortals, she was the first to take action to do so, thus sparking a rebellion. Throughout her rebellion, she displayed the hallmarks of a top-notch warrior and general, but she spent most of her time during this as a general, waging a defensive war. This rebellion stretched from months to years to decades and to centuries, with no one, not even the goddess, sufficiently chronicling this length, so many details ended up lost to time. What was well-chronicled, though, was how the rebellion ended (though technically, it is more of an armistice than an outright cessation of all hostilities). It turned out that a lot of her allies from the divine realm were actually sleeper agents. They had managed to embed themselves all throughout her chain of command, taking decades and then centuries to do so. The whole time, they operated like any faithful/loyal subordinate would, but they also slipped intel back to the divine realm. Eventually, well, the closest comparison I can give is that Order 66 happens (I am a massive Star Wars fans, so expect more comparisons to it than anything else), and with that, nearly 3/4 of all mortals end up slaughtered; some mortals had sided with the divine realm, only to be betrayed themselves after joining in this act. The goddess survives the attempt on her, and so do her closest allies, and they manage to escape with the survivors they were able to gather themselves. The breaking point for the goddess, though, came when they reached the shelter she had personally built for the survivors closest to her, and... well, because I used the Order 66 comparison, I will go ahead and simply compare it to the aftermath at the Jedi Temple and let you imagine how she takes it. The survivors continued to turn to her for leadership. Her aides recognized they cannot simply run and hide, so they concluded that an effective counterattack is needed and thus pitched it to the goddess. The goddess, meanwhile, had already reached a similar conclusion, but her mind was more on revenge than survival. Using what remained of their intel networks, they determined where in the mortal realm that the divine realm had been waging their war from. As for how it went down, well, it's basically another scene of the Jedi Temple, only based on the intro cinematic from the SWTOR MMO where the Sith attacked the Temple - and yes, the goddess and her allies basically "went Sith" on the divine, with the goddess herself personally leading it all from the front. After that, she sent her allies off to focus on what remains of the mortals, and with that, she secretly embarked on a personal revenge mission, resulting in her more-or-less eliminating what remains of the divine's commanders. There was one more battle - or rather, duel - that she took part in, but this is taking too long, so I will end this part here, though the outcome of it should be obvious enough. Anyway, despite a possibly desperate attempt to just disappear afterwards, her remaining loyal allies managed to track her down. Mind you, they did not force her back; rather, they refused to let her give up on the people she fought for, and they quite adamantly refused to let her give up on herself. Eventually, she relented, concluding that disappearing would not be the best course of action. Upon returning, she learned that they had discovered a new realm, one similar to the mortal realm while bearing a few hallmarks of the divine one. They determined it to be not connected to the divine realm at all, ultimately deciding to evacuate as many as they could to this realm. In the end, a sizable number of humans, for various reasons, were left behind in the mortal realm while all of the others escaped to this new one. From there, they gradually colonized this new realm, eventually building it up into a monarchy with the goddess as its queen. Her twelve closest allies - and arguably her only remaining friends - became her advisers, using their knowledge and experience from overseeing their earlier networks to establish new ones in this realm to provide everything they were back in the mortal realm as well as what they could not before because of the rebellion. The descendants of these twelve advisers formed the Twelve Great Families that look after all aspects of their new society, and the goddess remained on the throne, still somewhat connected to her people but otherwise usually uninvolved (not directly at least) for the centuries that pass until the events of the story for which I built this world for. While she remained queen the entire time and even over the course of the story I wrote, the people refuse to have anyone else as their queen, even when they accepted the transition into a representative democracy (that is in my story, but this post is already far too long, so I will not be detailing it here).

Because I'm a Buddhism from a buddhist country which buddhism organization's so separated from politic the powerful organization like Christian and Islam are really terrifying for normal people around here Usually all the temples are localize and operated quite freely with some restriction of what they can't do with only 1 (or 2 depend on the context) organization that will look over them to not breaking the rules Temples don't have much authority to do much beside teaching knowledge and such, also monk are forbidden to receive a money they need other people to organise the financing which these people are not from religious organization like catholic but it could be anybody so these temple manager are subject to be look over by normal law enforcement people here are feel that religious should be pure from earthly desire and attempt to control it are unnatural. that's why I never saw and unable to cooperated buddhist organization into any media with distinct take since the core of the believe just basically "The ultimate truth to end all suffering consisting of 4 steps "1.Realising the problem "2.find the root cause of the problem "3.Catagorize the problem into each types "4.Fix the problems" and that's it, and the morning prayer is the reminder that the buddha has long since gone and just like everything else that came to being it will cease to exist at some point sooner or later, followed by another reminder that the clothes you put on are in good condition, no wear, no tear, no hole, and fully function at keep your body from warm and cold the clothes are clean and free from insect or any animal so it won't bring disease up on its wearer and people nearby and the clothes you wear must come to be yours rightfully and ending with another reminder that everything is temporary so when I want some religious conflict the washed-up catholic's sadly be my go to choice

0:01 you mean The catholic church right? And aknowlige that there are many rites in catholic church

Here's my dwarf concept for my story: Dwarves are a race of people that were created by miners who live underground. Since they have spent generations upon generations underground, this caused severe Vitamin D deficiency (aka lack of sunlight). Vitamin D deficiency can cause growth stunting/poor skeletal growth. That is why their bodies are so small. They have long, elf-like ears due to their bodies adapting to hearing loss. Living underground has been known to cause loss of hearing. Another feature is that my Dwarves have glowing purple eyes and purple glowing veins. The very mineral they have been mining for generations (which I call Aionium) is essentially crystalized space-time. Because my story has a Physical Realm (where the story takes place/where the world is based) and the Dream Realm (the home of creation, essentially. In the Dream Realm, everything is a dream made reality). This crystalized space-time is like a chemical gas, if you will. A mist. So whenever they mine these crystals, the cracks in the crystal can cause bits of space-time to seep out. Since miners are around these crystals essentially 24/7, they are inhaling this space-time mist. It's entering their bodies somehow. This causes a purple energy to radiate from their bodies. It is projected through their eyes and through the blood that courses through their veins

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He sounds like a German vampire.

The answer is really only just, do what you want, as long as it makes sense and has good reasoning

I hated, and still hate, that they dropped Greyhawk and created forgotten realms just to get away from Gygax. FR sucks overall but some of the supplements are very good - moonshae and underdark - and one was excellent - Rashemen. Also, you are right about Wildemount - it's trash.

Ah yes...AI i love it

One thing is that some fantasy wars indeed have no purpose, imagine a war between two feudal lords for family feuds of marriage arrangements or code of honor. Sometimes the politics of noblemen, caused lot of death and destruction of the ordinary folk in history.

I disagree with some of the list. Greyhawk is s teir. Its not generic, its literally the OG. What makee Greyhawk S teir is that its a static setting with very little history and minimalist detail. This makes it a much bigger playground for DMs to homebrew. Greyhawk became an official setting when they were trying to connect all the 1e modules to a single setting. At ita core, its a setting of dungeons. I agree with you in Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance. Both are generic and too detailed to be a playground. Also, damn good criticism on Forgotten Realms. Dark sun should be ranked lower for the same reason. Its a cool setting, but the lore is extremely restrictive which makes it very difficult to run a campaign in. There just isnt much to do there. Planescape is easily S teir. It's a great playground. Ravenloft should be S teir for the same reason. Its a huge DM play ground were any theme or even historical time frame can be difference. You can do Renaissance Venice game or ancient egypt in the same setting. You can do classic fantasy, or even a bit of scifi. Its easily my favorite setting for creativity. There is literally something for everyone in Ravenloft. Other mentions not listed, Mysteria, Hollow World, and Lankhmar.

Blackmoore is not a setting. It was just the game Arnesons group was running. In 1e it was rolled into Greyhawk and moved over to Mysteria as the base setting for Classic DnD.

Not counting the details of magic, deities and non-human sentients, when it comes to the geography, there are 2 universal questions for a 1 region story: what does the river look like and where is that region on the planet's equator. Now sure, wacky biome placement is hardly unknown to fiction (or real life sometimes), but unless the railway or live-in airships is a thing in your setting, chances are that humanity is still going to huddle a river or the coast.

I don’t feel like you should choose between being cool and realistic, I mean, just look at the pike and shit tactic, that might actually be the coolest shit I’ve seen

I want to watch this video for your advice so much, but i can't... this "RIIIGIIN"... i can't... #noHate but i just can't..

Media literacy os a shit point. Also empires such as Rome are unfoutably based because they brought civilization to europe, where there nothing more than tribes of wild men living mud huts. Cope barbarian.

I love your accent

I learned one thing here and it is that women look good in suits.

Oh damn... I always struggled with "theme", feeling it such a HUEG word that meant way too much for my brain, but starting out with the mindset that Tolkiens races all had a theme helps a bit! In a worldsetting where Elves are a form of Moon-living creature that has an unnatural way of appearing too good for humans, making humans feel sub-par in every way, they would represent tyranny of the elite, but likewise Elves are where all the monsters spawn from when they stop living the perfect life. Dwarves would be those who hold onto old ideas, but they also focus a bit too much on technology and being a dwarf is more about being technologically advanced. Then Humans represents the hope for the future, that things will end well...

Safe to say that I went with one of the lazier approaches to the races of my world. By and large, I did not make any major distinctions between the different races, at least not in terms of culture. Sure, there are certain stereotypes that have persisted - mostly positive ones, but still - but because of the status quo being that of a single unified nation and not in any sort of oppressive or stratified way, those stereotypes come across more as holdouts from the distant past that are still in the process of losing what little of their grip had managed to persist. Of course, I still tried to pepper in different cultures and traditions, but they are based more on geography rather than biology. Even so, there are some: • Dragonewts, due to their closer association to dragons, which are upheld as symbols of power and balance, tend to be trusted more, and thanks to pressures from without and especially within, they generally strive to not violate that trust, particularly when it comes to public safety, essentially becoming a race of more approachable Judge Dredds (harsh whenever necessary but fair at all times). • Centaurs have a similar reputation, but it is over trade rather than public safety, going back to them being the most suited to making the heavily burdened long-distance journeys and thus aim to make the journeys and the trading that occurs along them worth it for all parties involved (I haven't yet figured out an equivalent for the old "If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going" slogan, but that does sum it up). • Dwarves, in part due to their stature, end up seeing a lot more than most other races or people do, especially during their stints in public service, and this comes back to feed/inform them of their other pursuits, particularly in the arts. • Succubi, largely due to their natural charisma and... a certain specific appeal of theirs, are able to get closer to a much wider variety of people, putting them in an excellent position for practicing medicine, up to and including encouraging patients to follow given medical advice. • Humans, because of how comparatively short-lived they are (nothing less than the usual lifespan on Earth, but still not as long as some of the other races), carry an almost obsessive drive for exploration and innovation, thus becoming researchers or just generally pushing the boundaries on a subject - and this was actively cultivated by the goddess-queen of the world in an effort to prevent from desiring nothing but mindless routines and especially supposed easy answers from a charismatic authoritarian. To reiterate, these are old stereotypes for this world that are breaking down - slowly, but still - and not towards any real negative, just towards a "It is not just [insert race here] who can do [insert profession here]." It is not anything deep, let alone fleshed out in any noteworthy manner, but it is something.

If you think birthright is a cookie cutter campaign setting you don’t know jack about what you are talking about. In fact u should do a lot of homework before delving in on any of these settings. You don’t even have a willkipedia level understanding of them.

Hmm. Planescape, ravenloft, Birthright, mystara, Dark sun, oerth, krynn, Toril are all good

People play American football in yards and fields all the time You just either play tackle with no pads, two hand touch or flag. All you need to know are basic things like where the sidelines are and the endzone. Plus if there are downs/distances.

So, absolutely nothing on causes for wars prior to WW1 and nationalism? What a waste..

Your voice is so beautiful. Can't wait to listen to more videos.

Skipping Mystara :D

Thanks. This video is so helpful. I get to learn more about the worlds of DND. I have a lot more experience with MTG. So I can give more info here. My big thing is that I freaking love Ravnica. That is definitely S tier. The Guildmasters Guide to Ravnica is the first DND 5E book I ever got. I didn't know how to play DND at the time. I like to flip through and look at all the pretty pictures. That is so inspiring. Ravnica is even the first MTG setting I learned about. It is a plane that is almost entirely made up of city. There are ten factions, called guilds, that compete for political control. There is a powerful magic to prevent open warfare called the Guildpact. MTG has five colors to group cards. The ten guilds represent all ten combinations of two colors. Each guild has its own aesthetic, card mechanics, and philosophy. It is truely fascinating to see. Ravnica is essentially MTG meets Game of Thrones. It is so iconic that the guild names have become the general names of color pairs. A player can refer to thier deck by guild name, even if its cards depict a different plane. I am a big fan of Theros. I love Greek Mythology, and this plane is way up my ally. The Theros book was one of the earliest DND 5E books I got. I am also fond of Archavios. That is the plane that has the magical school of Strixhaven. I am a huge fan of magic school, and I love Harry Potter. There is a cool DND 5E book on Strixhaben. I got that too. There are plenty of other planes in MTG. That would make great inspiration for jomebrew. There is Dominaria, Eldraine, Kaldheim and so much more.

I kinda have 3 magic systems that exist in my story. The sorcery & Alchemy are tied into sciences & have very strict adherence to the laws of the universe. In sorcery all you are doing is transferring energy so when you are to heat something up you yourself will lose heat. So you will need an exhaust to prevent Treo from forming which is a kinda magic damage caused by basically killing cells to do magic & Sorcery doesn't work at all without having some baseline of alchemical substances in your body meaning its tied in some ways to alchemy. Alchemy is just chemistry but I added magical elements which have an extra few particles which react with the 5th fundamental force the interdimensional force which allows more complex properties & a parallel form of each normal force. This force allows for most magical things to be done but its restricted heavily by its own laws & the way that the elements can mix due to shifting between the frames of our dimension (So we are in the base above us is the spectral where souls & ghosts are, next is quantum which is parallel to our form of time & all meaning time only can move when you don't observe it & the final is temporal where time only really exists & space doesn't so each has a different time to space ratio ours is 3:1, spectral is close to 55:45, quantum is 45:55 & time would be 1:3 roughly). This basically traps sorcery with like 6 main things it can do, heat up or cool down something, redirect magical attacks, use radiation, transfer life energy & transfer electricity. The next magic would be spells which work by invoking a god, spirit or ancestors to basically tell them what to do. This form of magic isn't limited that much & thus you can kinda do most things like turn blood to acid & such however its main draw back is you kinda need to have the things you invoke on your side. So if you don't devote yourself to a god of say fire you can't ask them to cause a fire. Simply with that you also have the fact that the gods won't do it to just anybody & you have a very limited system however if you work with more evil spirits who really don't care what they do you gain more power but at the cost of corruption into a horrific beast like hags. This is the hardest to explain & some specific people can learn how to use resonances (which is also called the language of the gods) to alter reality as the gods do but this takes years of training & includes being able to do things like those Mongol shamans can with making two sounds at once & all to do anything really. The final thing would be soul magic which uses souls as its power source & kinda ties into the others. I haven't gotten to a point where I need to explain this yet as its yet to properly appear. Edit: just remembered I have complex anti-magic things as well. There are special clothes that prevent magic of spells & sorcery. There is a rock that prevents resonances & sorcery. There is also a special metal called Lead that's so dense that it can stop any form of sorcery from passing through it which leads to lead being more precious than gold due to just how valuable it is to have a material that prevents a nobody being able to kill you from outside a bedroom. There is also a seal which prevents magic when made right but is weaker in the more simplistic design used by an anti-magic group which can not stop really strong mages who are able to over power the symbol. The symbol also doesn't stop soul magic as it was produced by a God before the practice existed.

I agree about Eberron as it is the most logical and coherent world built on DnD rules. In any magical world, magic would be part of technology and Eberron is the only setting that works in that way. I would rate Dark Sun one or two tier lower, because despite catching the mood and tone of a postapocalyptic world, it has some major inconsistancies with DnD mechanics. Dark Sun is setting, that is much about survial, e.g. getting food and water, enduring enviromental conditions etc. However DnD mechanics easily make that aspect pointless, as even a low level cleric or druid can solve this problem with a few spells. I'd rate Forgotten Realms A-tier, because despite some flaws (no technical and social advancement in centuries, powerful good NPCs, who for some reason act very passive) and more generic medieval nature, it is very detailed and is certainly not limited to the Sword Coast (I ran my first campaign in Aglarond and Rashemen, another in Cormyr and Sembia, none of which are anywhere near the Sword Coast). As far as Wildemount, I fully agree, it is really an generic example of the most generic of generic settings.

In my setting, one major city has a large bridge that crosses a river ravine connecting what is considered the north the country’s landmass to the south of the landmass. The city is on the northern side with walls and battlements increasing towards the river/bridge including (previously) a large castle keep right beside it, while the southern side has no major settlements and (after a brief and nearly disastrous rebellion following which all fortifications and structures there were leveled) was historically forbidden from any development. This was set up when the armies faithful to the current religious authority defeated their rivals of a different sect to the south and marched over the river to exile the sect off the landmass. As a result, the city was built right on the former divide of the sects with the religious authority’s headquarters as the centerpiece - the other side of the river soon cleared so the southern rulers could never again mount a defense and rise up to challenge the church or the lords in the north. In recent times, however, after the city went through many invasions and razings (as it turns out, no matter how good your defensive plan is, people just really like conquering important cities), the current lineage of rulers have placed a palace where the old castle keep once stood, and have recently been developing the other side of the river with the major addition of the palace of government as part of their project to centralize the state (much to the disdain of the ever-more-paranoid religious leadership, believing this a dangerous step toward empowering the south they’d mostly kept under northern rule).

glad my ideas inspired u too bro

What if a Godking made a chamber that is secretly a geometric weapon desgined by him and his sons to be used against intruders who are trying to steal crucial information and secrets from his vault that serves as database and library recording all the top secret information and knowledge he and his dynasty knows and this chamber identifies the intruder as a target and through reality warping ethereal powers designed into a defense system breaks the laws of geometry and turns the vaults into a maze like dungeon where intruders can't get to the vaults and are lost in it's changing halls and directions while the Godking's forces can hunt them down and prevent their escape because the system recognizes they are not the intruders. Would that be a good use of a Dungeon into sophistic and practical means while trapping the target?

Excellent, as always

Dungeons are in a weird position for me. For the most part, I am not a fan of them. I do not quite mind them, but I usually just gloss over them without much thought. Granted, this may be due to how they are usually treated in their worlds, and if the creator does not particularly care about them, the audience usually does not. Of course, I have seen some examples where dungeons have gotten a lot more attention than they usually do. The biggest one to me is not Moira or anything from LOTR, but rather from Danmachi - or as it is better known in English, _Is it Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?_ In that series, while it does focus on just one dungeon, it does a pretty good job of building a story (and from that, a whole world) around a seemingly endless array of people making lives for themselves around it in some way, and over the course of the stories, you learn that there is a lot about it that hardly anyone knows; even the gods know barely any more than the people do despite living among them while being temporally immortal, and those that do know more (albeit not much more) use it for their own personal whims. Most of what I consider to be more interesting uses of dungeons do tend to come from more eastern media, and there are a few more examples I can think of that, while probably not as interesting as my given example, are more interesting than what is usually given in more western media. Of course, plenty of eastern media treats dungeons in the same possibly thoughtless way that turns me off to dungeons, so it is not as if I am claiming that eastern media generally treats dungeons better. Still, for my own worldbuilding, because of how overdone dungeons feel to me, I mostly just left them out of it. I do have one that _could_ be described as a dungeon - if you stretch the definition a little bit - but it is more of an underground city (and not of the stereotypical dwarven variety) with many points of relatively easy access to and from the surface. It is a more recent addition to my worldbuilding, so the details are not that fleshed out, but still, it is there.

The thing that I use that is closer to trade cities than what you're talking about is what I call league cities. The hentaitic league is a sor seventh variation for what I mean by a league. The lead cities are home to a league which is sort of a wholesale hub of an allied set of merchants. So there will always be a reserve price coming out of the league for league merchants and if the local price becomes significantly off of significantly off of that, the local league merchant will set up a rebalancing supply line until the supplies/prices rebalance. This means that the long distance goods travel in know hubbins spoke network like that of the traditional airlines. This also means that there's a large set of goods that you can get anywhere at something resembling similar prices and similarly to sell on the local merchant of whichever legue. Does this system fall under your objection to the concept of trade cities? It is definitely a city that has a lot more trade than it's normal (regional trade hab) explanation would explain and therefore a higher population and wealth.