1. Of the literally hundreds of maps on his site, there are only two which are actually based on Middle Earth.

2. 'Style' is not copyrightable. No one owes royalties to Picasso for Cubism.

3. Plagiarism is representing someone else's work as your own. The tag line of his site is literally "Tolkien Inspired Cartography". He's very clear that he's following Tolkien's style.

4. Tolkien borrowed from previous cartographers, his own style evolved considerably over time and what you probably think of as the iconic Tolkien map, was actually by Pauline Baynes.

I'm not saying its illegal. I just think it's cheap.

Would someone who paints photographs for you in the style of Van Gogh's Starry Night also be "cheap?"

Particularly if their website were called "StarryNightPhotos.com" and they clearly said on their site "these are painted in the style of Van Gogh?"

Because that's all this is. And there are plenty of AI sites that do exactly what I just said but poorly, and probably plenty of artists with a side-job of doing something like that better.

I would call the second or third person copying what he's doing "cheap", I wouldn't call what he's doing cheap.

Tolkien is 50 years dead, The Hobbit's copyright expires in 10 years. I think it's fine.

I am not convinced that copying style is somehow evil.

Neither am I, I just think its icky.

He's handy producing these things and gives a fairly detailed tutorial on how to do the same thing.

As I love OS maps and Tolkien I really like this - I might even try and get him to do my local map square.

He does commissions aswell, if you check his website.

Tolkien has been dead for a while now, I don’t think he minds.

JRR has been dead for a while, but his estate still exists and has been highly protective of his works (putting it kindly). They're the reason it took so long for a movie to be made, and why LOTR Online had to make up a bunch of stuff to fill in for inaccessible source material.