Garnfellow
Explorer
Pity, friends, the lot of the poor, neglected roper. This iconic D&D monster premiered way back in the old Strategic Review, before such latecomers as the clay golem, ghost, or shambling mound. And yet, where is the love for this classic monster, the roper? Where are all the Compleat Slayer's Handbook to Ropers? Cripes, the designers at Wizards of the Coast couldn't even be bothered to get the poor thing's creature type right. And the lawyers didn't even care enough to make the roper closed intellectual property, even though Gygax himself has said he created it "whole cloth".
OK, I admit the roper's got its shortcomings, starting with an incredibly silly name. "Roper" does not exactly inspire fear in explorers, does it? It's right up there with the "Violet Hoser" or "Leaker" or "Dire Mouth-Breather."
And then there's its appearance, which alternates between a diplodocus coprolite, an alien priapus, an enraged tree-stump, or a . . . an I don't know what.
And yet, and yet . . . in pure game mechanics, the roper is a downright nasty monster, and not just when you place one (CR 12) in an adventure for 3rd-level characters. Six ranged touch attacks, each doing 2d8 points of Strength damage? And then it reels you in to chomp off your head with its bite attack.
And there are some other glimmers of potential here: the roper is a fairly intelligent monster from the Underdark, and just proximity to the Underdark makes everything cooler. (Well, except for the Desmodu. Nothing is gonna make those things cool.) And in his great Drow of the Underdark book, Ed Greenwood tried, and largely succeeded, to forge a connection between ropers and the worship of the being known variously as the Elder Elemental God, the Elder Eye, That Which Lurks, or Ghaunadaur.
So here's my challenge to EnWorld: let's rehabilitate this monster. Let's make the roper cool. Think of what Alan Moore was able to do to all those silly DC Comics characters. By just adding a little bit of detail here, and a little insight there, Moore was able to take even the dumbest of comic book characters (Swamp Thing?) and make them interesting, sometimes even deeply compelling—and all without rewriting them completely from scratch.
The first thing to tackle is the name. I could see veteran adventurers using "roper" as a common term for these monsters, but I bet the drow and the other Underdark races have other, more colorful terms for these critters. Look at what "Illithid" did for the mind flayers, another monstrous race with a goofy name. So go on, what would be some good alternate names for the roper?
The next thing to think about would be creating a decent backstory for these monsters. Again, look at what a good backstory was able to do for the Githyanki, which otherwise would just be a race of anorexic and psionic drow (yawn).
I really like the idea of a connection to the Elder Elemental God—ropers could use a nice, Cthulhu-esque origin. An alien servitor race, spawned in darkness as the first and last servants of the Elder Eye . . .
I am also half-remembering a science fiction short story I read once, long ago -- maybe by Ray Bradbury. A survey team lands or crashes on a alien planet, and are attacked by these horrible living stones, ravenous, and with fang-filled maws. Scared the hell out of me back in the day, and that's the sort of vibe I'd like to attach to the ropers.
Anyone else want to give it a try? What can be done to give the roper the due it deserves?
OK, I admit the roper's got its shortcomings, starting with an incredibly silly name. "Roper" does not exactly inspire fear in explorers, does it? It's right up there with the "Violet Hoser" or "Leaker" or "Dire Mouth-Breather."
And then there's its appearance, which alternates between a diplodocus coprolite, an alien priapus, an enraged tree-stump, or a . . . an I don't know what.
And yet, and yet . . . in pure game mechanics, the roper is a downright nasty monster, and not just when you place one (CR 12) in an adventure for 3rd-level characters. Six ranged touch attacks, each doing 2d8 points of Strength damage? And then it reels you in to chomp off your head with its bite attack.
And there are some other glimmers of potential here: the roper is a fairly intelligent monster from the Underdark, and just proximity to the Underdark makes everything cooler. (Well, except for the Desmodu. Nothing is gonna make those things cool.) And in his great Drow of the Underdark book, Ed Greenwood tried, and largely succeeded, to forge a connection between ropers and the worship of the being known variously as the Elder Elemental God, the Elder Eye, That Which Lurks, or Ghaunadaur.
So here's my challenge to EnWorld: let's rehabilitate this monster. Let's make the roper cool. Think of what Alan Moore was able to do to all those silly DC Comics characters. By just adding a little bit of detail here, and a little insight there, Moore was able to take even the dumbest of comic book characters (Swamp Thing?) and make them interesting, sometimes even deeply compelling—and all without rewriting them completely from scratch.
The first thing to tackle is the name. I could see veteran adventurers using "roper" as a common term for these monsters, but I bet the drow and the other Underdark races have other, more colorful terms for these critters. Look at what "Illithid" did for the mind flayers, another monstrous race with a goofy name. So go on, what would be some good alternate names for the roper?
The next thing to think about would be creating a decent backstory for these monsters. Again, look at what a good backstory was able to do for the Githyanki, which otherwise would just be a race of anorexic and psionic drow (yawn).
I really like the idea of a connection to the Elder Elemental God—ropers could use a nice, Cthulhu-esque origin. An alien servitor race, spawned in darkness as the first and last servants of the Elder Eye . . .
I am also half-remembering a science fiction short story I read once, long ago -- maybe by Ray Bradbury. A survey team lands or crashes on a alien planet, and are attacked by these horrible living stones, ravenous, and with fang-filled maws. Scared the hell out of me back in the day, and that's the sort of vibe I'd like to attach to the ropers.
Anyone else want to give it a try? What can be done to give the roper the due it deserves?
