This archive contains natural coral reef topography data from the southeast coast of Mo’orea, French Polynesia and idealized reef topography generated with a fractional Brownian motion (fBm) algorithm. These data were used to understand and compare different metrics for quantifying coral reef roughness. These data relate to this publication: Duvall, M. S., J. L. Hench, and J. H. Rosman, in press, Collapsing complexity: metrics to quantify multi-scale properties of reef topography. To appear in Journal of Geophysical Research (Oceans). This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Grant No. OCE 16-37396 (and earlier awards) as well as a generous gift from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Research was completed under permits issued by the French Polynesian Government (Délégation à la Recherche) and the Haut-commissariat de la République en Polynésie Francaise (DTRT) (Protocole d'Accueil 2005-2018). This work represents a contribution of the Moorea Coral Reef (MCR) LTER Site.