In regard to when not to include negative dice in a pool....do you all always have your players roll at least 1 negative die when facing zombies due to their horrifying feature or sometimes if the situation warrants do your players not have to have a negative die in their pools when facing a zombie or zombie(s) in terms of attacking them?

Also

What do you do if when you give experience for advancement the players allow a character to have a positive feature that is almost identical to one he/she already has? The book says if you get the same feature again you instead increase the governing attribute. For example: in my game we have a player who is very focused on being a melee machine. He wields a fireaxe and kills a lot of zombies. It is rather insane. He has a positive feature called CQC (Close Quarters Combat) Training. He uses this when wielding melee weapons. He was later allowed to add another positive feature called Melee Happy which he was also using to get another positive die when attacking with melee weapons. This should not be allowed by the rules because this second feature does essentially the same thing as the first one, right?

In regard to when not to include negative dice in a pool....do you all always have your players roll at least 1 negative die when facing zombies due to their horrifying feature or sometimes if the situation warrants do your players not have to have a negative die in their pools when facing a zombie or zombie(s) in terms of attacking them?

So, page 44 (same one you cited), right-hand column, first paragraph and third paragraph talk about the innate Difficulty of a test. This can be based on environmental conditions and hazards and/or the inherent difficulty of a task. Page 45 has a table that explicitly lays out inherent Difficulty levels with comparable tasks listed next to them. So if you think fighting zombies is akin to running through an open field, playing a friendly game of cards, or bargaining with a merchant, only then would you give no innate Difficulty dice. Thats before Features, Traumas and even hazard/environmental/circumstantial factors/dice.

What do you do if when you give experience for advancement the players allow a character to have a positive feature that is almost identical to one he/she already has? The book says if you get the same feature again you instead increase the governing attribute. For example: in my game we have a player who is very focused on being a melee machine. He wields a fireaxe and kills a lot of zombies. It is rather insane. He has a positive feature called CQC (Close Quarters Combat) Training. He uses this when wielding melee weapons. He was later allowed to add another positive feature called Melee Happy which he was also using to get another positive die when attacking with melee weapons. This should not be allowed by the rules because this second feature does essentially the same thing as the first one, right?

Can you give an example where you would have players roll but not have to roll at least one negative die?

IMO, if the players are rolling for something then there is some inherent difficulty to the task which justifies at least one negative die. If the task is so easy there is no need roll any negative, then why have them roll at all and just have them succeed?

PC-initiated Perception tests are the most common I could think of.

"I want to scan the streets with my scope from the roof."

"Ok, roll me a Perception test." (which is a WIL test at my table)

If there is an NPC sneaking around down there for instance, their test would set the number of successes needed for the PC to spot them, but it's not gonna cause the PC stress if they fail cuz they don't know anything is out there. Or maybe I just make 'em roll so there's mystery.

Or say a PC is trying to rig up a bicycle to the broken generator they found, they're just sitting at the base no zombies pounding at the door, and no ones gonna die if they don't get this to work, in fact they just want to be able to charge that MP3 player they found. LOG test, 2 successes needed, no chance of Stress.

Anything like that where success or failure matters for the story, but there's not really any chance of inducing stress from it.

Remember that the negative dice aren't just a way to introduce difficulty they also introduce danger. In a lot of cases something might be hard to do but if you fail you wont actually get hurt in any way. The perception test above is a prime example of this. You might have low Willpower but if you fail to see anything getting mental stress would be a bit....random. Instead just rolling a die - and failing because you rolled above the attribute value is enough.

Thanks for all the responses - that makes sense.

Don't forget, you could drop the 1 negative dice for fighting zombies, if the campaign has gone on for a while (this is subjective, weeks? Months? Maybe years of game time?). They've become enured to the idea that zombies exist, and that they're brain eating freaks, so seeing a few zombies shambling up the road won't slow the characters down like they once did. However, if it was a herd of zombies, or they were surprised (they kicked open the door of a house, only to find a zombie just at hand), or even a different 'species' of zombie, then the negative dice for fighting zombies would be reinstated.

What do you do if when you give experience for advancement the players allow a character to have a positive feature that is almost identical to one he/she already has? The book says if you get the same feature again you instead increase the governing attribute. For example: in my game we have a player who is very focused on being a melee machine. He wields a fireaxe and kills a lot of zombies. It is rather insane. He has a positive feature called CQC (Close Quarters Combat) Training. He uses this when wielding melee weapons. He was later allowed to add another positive feature called Melee Happy which he was also using to get another positive die when attacking with melee weapons. This should not be allowed by the rules because this second feature does essentially the same thing as the first one, right?

If I understand you correctly if the player already has the feature then it would fall under this rule from page 47

"If the PC already has the feature: The player

the characteristic remains the same."

The way we run it is like this.

If there is no danger associated with the action, you do not roll a negative die.

If there is no danger associated with the task but it is harder to perform because of obvious reasons (dark outside when firing at a long range target) you roll 1 fewer positive die for each opposing element.

You roll a negative die when danger is present only. Each opposing element adds a negative die to that roll where danger is present.

So, let's say you are picking the lock of a door to try and get inside of a building. Make a Will test. Maybe picking locks is your thing so you add another die. Maybe picking locks isn't your thing and the lock is rusty, so you remove one die. That might make picking the lock impossible for you, thematically you would simply automatically fail this test over and over again so it might best to just break in the door with a strength test. However, even though it is more difficult, it isn't something dangerous so negative dice don't enter the equation.

Same scenario, you need to pick a lock. Fast this time because zed heads are on your group's collective anuses. That is a negative die for a will check because you are freaking the heck out. You don't lose a positive die if it is rusty, you gain a negative because those zombies are RIGHT THE FUDGE THERE AND THEY ARE GONNA KILL US ALL!

That's the way I run it, personally and it works out well. The best way to keep people from trying to do the same thing over and over again is to add an extra element to the obstacle or object in question each time they fail. Rusty lock didn't get picked? It is now jammed with metal from your broken lock pick so that is another positive die lost. I don't impose further difficulty in dangerous situations. The stress threat is enough to get people to move on instead of spamming a bad idea, the extra penalties during calm situations making the task more and more unlikely to succeed causes players to pursue other options quickly too.

Another thing my players have learned is that they should never try to save their families in my games. It isn't fun taking the severe mental stress from me killing their kids in terrible, terrible ways in front of them. Just assume they were out of town and unreachable, focus on surviving for the time being.

It does seem strange that it doesn't explicitly say to include one difficulty die fighting zombies. I think in my game I'll be inclined to not in most cases - a Willpower test if they see them in some horrible way, maybe, in the first round (maybe to determine initiative even in some cases).