Unpopular opinion: digital maps lose the soul of fantasy cartography

I was browsing through some old forum archives from 2008 last week and found a stat that blew my mind: over 70% of fantasy maps posted back then were hand-drawn. Fast forward to today and I bet it's flipped completely the other way. Everyone uses Wonderdraft or Inkarnate now (which are fine tools, don't get me wrong). But I dug up this old post from a guy who spent 6 months drawing a map of his world on a single sheet of bristol board, and the detail was insane. He had notes in the margins about coffee stains and erased borders. That kind of character just doesn't come from a digital brush preset. Has anyone else noticed how same-y a lot of the digital maps look now? Or am I just being an old man yelling at clouds?

2 comments

2 Comments

mason_jackson1mo ago

Man, even my coffee stains are digital now. They come in a preset pack.

daniel5111mo ago

Hang on, are you sure about that 70% number from 2008? I was around on those old forums back then and it felt way lower. Most people were still using MSPaint or Photoshop, not actual hand-drawn stuff on paper. The ones who did hand-draw were the hardcore folks, but most of us just used basic digital tools because it was easier to share online. I remember trying to scan my hand-drawn maps and the scanner made everything look washed out anyway. So digital sort of won before tools like Wonderdraft even existed. The hand-drawn maps got posted more because they were special, but they weren't the majority.