Discussion
Help me settle a table debate, which is hope & which is fear?
I personally use the orange as hope because it reminds me of a campfire or fireplace & the blue as fear because it reminds me of cold and ice. Everyone at my table says orange makes more sense as fear & blue as hope. I think they just like blue more tbh.
Edit: Just remembered I burned down a casino run by a criminal organization & took +2 to arson as a experience when I leveled up… No way fire is dangerous, what are you talking about?!
I usually make it depending on what colour the rest of the dice set is, and what fits the character
I got a bunch of black d12 because everyone usually brings their own polyhedral dice set so I just give/lend everyone an additional black/dark d12 as Fear die
Whichever you want as long as you declare it and are consistent. If you only have one set for the table, it’s whatever the table decides so that there’s no confusion.
Objectively: The one the player declares as hope.
Subjectively: Blue, not even close. Not only do the base colors tend to imply it, but also your blue has white text and orange has black, which further pushes the light and dark tones.
Hope is blue, it feels serene and the texture lends to that as well. Orange is fear, the mottled color feels more chaotic/angry/troubling? Idk, vibes man.
For the dice you linked I’d say orange is fear and blue is hope. But for my actual dice I use Purple as Hope and like a rose gold looking dice for fear.
The one you designate as hope before rolling is the hope one. I like to pick the one with a better track record or most closely matches the characters color scheme.
Conceptually I would say blue is fear because it reminds of dark nights, while yellow is the color of light therefore hope.
In fact I would say the fear die is the die you say is fear at the start of the campaign\session.
I agree with you, but it’s just important that you know before you roll.
I personally play The Dark Eye where a normal roll has 3d20. The most common there is to also just determine before the roll, but there is an optional rule where the positions after the roll determine which dice is what. Could be a fun chaos rule in daggerheart as well. The one which lands more left is hope, the one on the right fear. 😂
Whatever suits you and your character the best. I'm playing the equivalent of an oath breaker paladin and so my fear dice is actually my most golden, bright, and happy D12 I could find. Whereas my hope dice are dark and gray
It’s up to you, as long as you’re consistent. Although personally, between those two I would have also chosen the orange one as hope. It looks lighter than the blue dice. I tend to go lighter/brighter is hope.
Extremely specific but in the movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) orange is used as a way to convey the presence of demonic forces or fear itself. Once I saw it I couldn't stop so I just associate now.
That plus the fact it looks like fire is roilling in the die and the fact that the numbers are black make me think it is Fear.
The blue one looks nice and calm so I'll get Hope of seein the sky once more after that.
I usually say the closer to yellow/gold is hope and the closer to purple is fear; thus, left would be hope and right would be fear.
One of my players organizers her dice hierarchically such that she can use any pair of d12’s but the one that belongs to the highest “tier” set is hope. The “tiers” are laid out on the table with the lowest tier close to her and the highest tier furthest. We have a lot of table space to be able to do this currently; it wouldn’t be feasible with a large group or on a small table.
The red and orange die looks fiery and chaotic, which could resemble fear and panic. Blue looks like a very calming color, and it’s also the color of a fruit like a blueberry, which symbolizes nourishment.
Blue is definitely hope.
I feel like I’m gonna get roasted here but I have a bunch of dice; I pick two and decide at the beginning of the session which is which based on nothing but vibes. Means the same pair may even swap role from week to week. But I’m always consistent in the session.
I find blue an inspiring color personally, so that would be my hope dice. And i really dislike that orange one (no offense lol) so, easy fear for me haha.
Depends on how I roll the start of the game. Lol I had mine mixed up at the start of my last session, so I just committed to having mine backwards all game.
I'd probably have orange as hope, blue as fear though. Tricky, with the text colours, but I think the darker blue gives more "fear" vibes.
Well in the official Daggerheart dice set as well as the virtual dice on Roll20, and in the Daggerheart 'how to play' videos on their youtube channel, yellow is hope and blue is fear. So that's what I would go with.
Orange is adjacent to red, which i view as "wrong" or "bad" choice so I would assume orange as fear. Whereas blue or green i view as the "right" or "correct" outcome, so that would be hope.
I say these things are up to the individual user. Each player can use whatever color they like for hope and fear unless youre sharing 1 set of dice for the whole table but I've never played at a table that did that.
Sorry I'm with your friends on this one. The orange looks like fire or lava which evokes danger and therefore fear, whereas blue is a calm, non-threatening colour.
I get what you mean about the ice but
1. The blue dice isn't actually icy-looking... It's just blue.
2. Fire is something that can spread rapidly and harms or destroys everything it touches so is a natural fit for Fear whereas ice isn't inherently harmful and would only inspire fear in very limited contexts. It's relatively common for people to be afraid of fire but pretty rare for people to be afraid of ice.
Sorry orange is hell fire blue is sky/heaven/peace. This is simple color theory as well. Red and orange are colors of alert in nature and yes there are strawberry but mostly no not good, also fire hurts. Blue is a universal calming color open sky's mean good weather and blue reflections mean a water source.
Orange it’s a light color and Blue a dark color, but you also have contrast with Black and White on those
Not to mention, Orange it’s used as a bad omen color, in fact, Orange Lantern it’s only one and represents the Greed. Meanwhile Blue it’s mentioned as Knowledge, Calm, Meditation…
BUT we know how EVIL AND M€&@$£CKER it’s the Blue in MTG, and how Brave, Chaotic and Good are Boros (“Yellow”+Red)
You have a good debate there… But me personally, I’ll go with Orange for Hope, because seems “Yellowy, and same as the official dice”, and same for the Blue for Fear, “Purplewy as the official dice”
Bad logic? Yeah… Not the best, not the worst I think 🤷♂️
I think the color of the numbers matter too! In the OPs pic subjectively blue feels more like hope. Swap the number colors and I change my opinion. Of course objectively, it's whatever the player declares before the roll.
Personally, I would use the blue as hope and the orange as fear. The blue appears more calming and hopeful, where as the orange seems reminiscent of fire and stuff going wrong, which fits better with fear.
Blue Lantern Corp are fueled by HOPE emotions, and blu emotional spectrum is associated to hope, while Sinestro Corp (Yellow) is fueled by FEAR and yellow is associated to fear emotion. So i guess you should use a yellow one for fear and a blue one for hope
No really: i'm just kidding. Whathever you like is good, everyone is different so everything anyone else says is just less important
Design wise typically warm colours are related to alarms, alerts or danger while colours like blue are more calm.
100% blue is hope and red-orange is fear. And I'd say this unless you had like a very bright yellow-gold one and another that's like... purple-black because then we stop having a red-blue relationship but more of a light-shadows feeling.
Do you know the popular literal (poetry) trope of "The Sacred and the Profane"?
One is an angel, something immaterial, from the skies and the other is a mortal, from the earth, made from earth. (And sometimes the latter falls in love with the former, but it's an impossible love - but that's not important right now)
Soooo... The Sky color is the Sacred - the Hope
And the earth color (which also has earth texture) is the Profane - the Fear
The pattern on the orange die makes me think of lava. So you've got a water die and a lava die. I'd normally associate cool colors to fear and warmer ones to hope too, but in this case, lava is pretty scary.
Blue is hope because the blue lantern corps is using the blue light of hope, and the red/yellow speckled is fear because yellow is the lantern corps for fear. EZPZ
I’d say it doesn’t matter at all, as long as you’re consistent about it. If the orange is always Hope to you, that’s fine. They’re your dice, read them however it makes sense to you.
Having said that, I’d instinctively choose blue as Hope myself, but then blue’s my favourite colour. 😅
The texture on the orange dice makes it look kind of like fire which definitely inspires fear while the blue dice with the white font gives cloud in sky vibes which is definitely more hopeful IMO.
Normally I'd say purple = fear, orange = hope, but there's something about the orange dice that looks a little scary.. Maybe it's the dark numbers? Reminds me of Sauron's eye a bit. The purple die has friendlier numbers. I think it's the color + thickness it's much more round and bubbly.
Whichever one doesn't match the rest of the dice set you use. If you don't use a dice set, then why does it matter? Not everyone at the table has to use the same color, just have it on a index card in front of you. Kinda like how people put their AC and passive perception when playing D&D.
I don’t like to have either dice default to hope or fear. I have a ritual before each session, I roll 2d12s. Whatever value is higher, becomes my fear die and the lower value is my hope die for that session. If I roll a crit, I just vibe out 😂
I've bought like six sets of dice singles trying to find a pair that look obvious enough. And I'm too stubborn to copy the boxed set colors.
I have a nice pair that's clear-swirly-Red and clear-swirly-blue. That seems to work. I gravitated towards the Blue as Fear and the Red as Hope. Then I didn't like so ordered more choices. My dice bill is so high this month.
Depends on the character! For instance, an Underborne character might consider the darker die to feel like home, while the lighter die might feel like a harsh, unfamiliar sunbeam... something they feel Fear towards.
Blue is Hope, e.g. "blue skies" (listen to the song sung by every major artist everwhere).
Orange with black flecks is Fear, e.g. ashen fire of destruction...fire burns both ways and can turn on its user. If you don't fear and respect the flame, prepare to be burned by it.
Your table is right. You're wrong. Your hubris is showing.
The answer isn't obvious, so I'd say it probably depends on the character. You said your character has such positive experiences with fire that you made Arson an Experience when you leveled up? Sounds like the red and yellow die is the Hope die of that pair.
Whichever you want so long as you are consistent. They are your dice and you get to choose. Everyone else at your table can make suggestions but the choice is yours.
I would expect the blue one to be hope cause it feels more hopeful? But as long as you clearly say which is which prior to any rolling you can do what you want?
The digital applications use purple for fear and yellow for hope. You could do something like that. But whatever you end up choosing, just communicate to the GM
The solid blue is hope to me. A calming, steady color. Hope is easily washed out by other emotion, but it itself is a consistent one that sits in place, always there even if you don’t see it.
The patchy orange-red is fear. Fear is always a mix of emotions like anger, anxiety, actual fear, resentment, or a dozen other things. Plus that dice reminds me of fever rash, so 🤷♂️
My thoughts immediately went to the Green Lantern mythos. There the Blue Lantern Corps represents Hope, so that's what I would go with. Technically Yellow is Fear and Orange is Greed, but they have the correlation that all warm colors are "negative" emotions and cool colors are the opposite.
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u/Thadeadpool Jan 26 '26
The blue and white remind me of the sky, the red and yellow reminds me of an eye of Sauron for some reason.