Just got my hands on this, anything I should be wary of before running it? Haven't gotten a chance to sit down and sink my teeth into it.

This is a huge thing for my table, but depends on your players' situations, and the type of players you have, and the type of game you want to run, but if you are interested in a more dynamic choices, action oriented game then you should probably tell your players that in the game universe their closest loved ones (immediate/nearby family, SOs, etc) simply do not exist, or are far far away on some trip, or kill them immediately, right before their eyes, or while they're on the phone with the PC, or have them play fictional characters even, whatever you have to do so that they are not a thought or goal for the PCs. Because otherwise you're gonna have people splitting up, and/or bunkering down, and/or just playing very conservatively and making it hard to cause interesting and dynamic things to happen.

My group had a "bit" of confusion over the dice mechanic. It's pretty simple on paper but there's a few nuances to it that can cause a bit of head scratching.

The important thing to remember is that negative dice do two things - they make tasks more difficult and less likely to succeed (by cancelling out some positive dice) and they also represent the implicit danger of the task in question (by causing some stress).

However this still means that tasks can be performed with NO negative dice and still not succeed. The book mentions this in passing but its definitely worth remembering. If you're doing something hard but not dangerous then it's perfectly acceptable to just say "roll 1 positive dice" and that's it. If your character is picking a lock with no extra pressure and it kinda seems a bit silly that they get mental stress from doing this (heck even mental stress from succeeding in doing this) then just don't include any negative dice.

This is especially worth mentioning for combat. The rules state no "base" difficulty for combat checks. What I mean by this is it doesn't say that zombies should automatically involve 2 negative dice when you attack them whereas for normal checks it mentions a base difficulty. You might include a few neg dice for other reasons (lots of zombies, it's dark, it's raining, you're scared etc) but remember that you can always just do positive dice.

With all this messing around with negative dice and stress often you end up in situations where your players cant actually be hurt. When players build up enough stress in one track they gain resistances. You may end up with situations where, in your game you're rolling 2 positive dice for zombie attacks. and you're players have 2 resistance....even if both those dice are successes then you're players cannot be hurt. Try and avoid this cos it just ends up being kinda stupid.

The important thing to remember is that negative dice do two things - they make tasks more difficult and less likely to succeed (by cancelling out some positive dice) and they also represent the implicit danger of the task in question (by causing some stress).

If you're doing something hard but not dangerous then it's perfectly acceptable to just say "roll 1 positive dice" and that's it.

The rules state no "base" difficulty for combat checks. What I mean by this is it doesn't say that zombies should automatically involve 2 negative dice when you attack them whereas for normal checks it mentions a base difficulty. You might include a few neg dice for other reasons (lots of zombies, it's dark, it's raining, you're scared etc) but remember that you can always just do positive dice.

With all this messing around with negative dice and stress often you end up in situations where your players cant actually be hurt. When players build up enough stress in one track they gain resistances. You may end up with situations where, in your game you're rolling 2 positive dice for zombie attacks. and you're players have 2 resistance....even if both those dice are successes then you're players cannot be hurt. Try and avoid this cos it just ends up being kinda stupid.

OR, if you are saying GMs should avoid just having two neg dice when the players have 2 Resostance, that is also not right in my opinion because they still serve their purpose of possibly canceling out positive dice. And if the players carry around that much Stress to try and game that system that is why you have to send more potent threats at them. So they can't feel comfortable doing that all the time.