In our playtest experience, it *was* playing to see what happened, but not in the way AW means it. Because this game is based on a mission structure, it plays episodically, and we didn't see much consequence rolling from mission to mission. This also means fronts don't come into play, and yes, the WC (that's Watch Commander) needs to do a bit more work to prep each session. In this, it plays a lot more like a standard RPG. The missions aren't scripted to as tight a degree as a prepackaged adventure, and we found that player-created complications as well as copious move-based consequences tended to throw the best laid plans to hell right quick.

But when I say we were playing to see what happened, I'm not referring to the plot. I'm referring to the interactions and relationships between the kill team members. This was something we really wanted to make a big part of the game when we started out, and so we built a couple of interacting rules into the system to create this push/pull dynamic we read in the fiction. So yeah, we have something like Hx and bonds, but there's a benefit to running them to the extremes. If you have a negative rating, you can crap all over that person and get xp for it. If you have a positive rating, you can get bonuses to help one another.

Screw that. No one helps one another in any *World game (and we've played several), and insulting the crap out of one another and taking umbrage at their insults (thus driving down your camaraderie with them) is more fun, right? Yeah, our group thought so too. So the Iron Fist loved to call my Salamander a simpering pussy whenever I'd insist on saving civilians in a combat operation, and I was happy to tell him what a miserable failure he was every time he didn't get a perfect success. Our White Scar wound up stealing the killing blow from almost everyone on the team at one point or another, quite by accident, and so everyone hated him. And we all ran with it.

Except as things got harder and the opposition became too much for us to handle individually, we began to need one another. The Iron Hand got swarmed by  tyranids, and my devestator cleared them out. I didn't have the Danger Close move yet, so I blasted away on him as well as the xenos pile on top of him. But because I was willing to do what was necessary, he develops a little respect for me, and his camaraderie score with me increases a little. And suddenly there's more to our kill-team's dynamic than endless pissing matches. We still struggled with philosophical disagreements, but when focused on mission objectives, we began to work in mutually supportive ways... sometimes. Other grudges refused to die (our Blood Angel vowed to hate our White Scar to the grave), but this too was part of seeing what happened.

So it requires a shifting a thought, but this can still be a game about exploration. In this case, you're not exploring the world. This game is set in a very well fleshed out setting that has decades of fictional material published. It's also not exploring your little part of it. As a member of Deathwatch, you exist for a specific purpose. You don't need to discover yourself, your relationship to the setting, nor do you ever wonder what you will do with your time. You're dropped into hostile territory and you kill xenos. Wash, rinse, repeat. However, who the men who fight and bleed beside you are to you, and who you are to them, is something that's a totally blank canvas at the game's beginning, and it turns out to be a massive part of the game, and far more than mechanically.

See, space marines don't talk to a lot of people. Many times there's no one to talk to. They spend most their time killing things. So if you're going to have any social interaction in this game, you need to talk to your group. And *that's* where you find out what happens.

Thanks for the link and thanks for giving our game a trial run. I'm happy to address any questions you have, and we'll certainly make notes and adjustments based on feedback.

Hi all,

I converted my game group to the AW family of games over a year ago, and we've only rarely played anything else since. However, at one point someone *really* wanted to play in the world of Warhammer 40K. One glance at the massive rulebook told us we weren't going to learn the new system (we just don't have the patience for rules-heavy systems anymore), so a friend and I started to reskin AW to Deathwatch.

It didn't really work, so we took the core engine and built a completely new game from the fiction of the world. We've been playing this game for the past 6 months, and while that's not nearly enough time to test every playbook, move, and piece of equipment, we've been having a blast with it, and the core of the game has worked remarkably well. Since we've had such a great time with it, and we can't sell it for obvious reasons, I thought I'd offer it up to the community. If anyone gives this a whirl, I'd love to hear how it worked for you. What worked, what didn't, what you changed and why, all of it.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8692922/Endless%20War.pdf

I've had problems like this twice in my recent game. While I handled it a little differently each time, at the core was simply saying "no."

The first case was just that. "No." Someone was coming into a game we'd already started, and wanted to play a cleric. I told him the people of the world we'd created were ancestor worshippers, but otherwise it would work exactly like the playbook. It's just that his cleric would be appealing to a venerated ancient rather than an all powerful god. So I asked him who this paragon of his people's history was. He answered he was the patron saint of healing, named Meow.

I shook my head and said no, I wasn't introducing that level of silliness into what had been up to that time a pretty serious game. Choose another name.

The other player had introduced a character based on the lead singer of a heavy metal band he'd been listening to on the drive over. Everything was based on if it was "truly metal." With him, I said that he could use this as a source of inspiration, but I needed him to work with me to make this more than a punchline. He still needed to fit in the world and the party, and he nodded immediately and said he both understood and was willing to work with me. In the end, he was without a doubt pushing the boundary of silly with each game, but he did keep it just on the edge instead of blasting past it.

I love the player contribution to world building present in DW, but I don't think it gives players a free pass to do whatever they want. There should be some general agreement of tone everyone works within.

I just started running a game for a friend of mine and his 13 year old son. He used to play D&D as a kid and wanted to get his boy involved with the hobby, but didn't really know how. He knew I remained a gamer, so he asked me to run some D&D for him. I did... for one session. After so much math and minifig positioning and hours long fights that were the showcase of the session, but not altogether exciting (they didn't suck, but they didn't feel like they had heft), I scrapped it and introduced them to Dungeon World instead, because I'd been having such success with it in my regular gaming group.

They liked D&D, but they Loved Dungeon World, and that capital L isn't a typo. I'm much happier running this too, but I am noticing one consistent problem: they cannot shake this idea that they're fragile. Every fight in D&D left them barely alive, usually with 1 or 2 hit points. Now, in DW, they refuse to engage anything without massive amounts of backup. When there was a band of kobolds in a nearby woods, they ran at the first sound of them, and would not go back unless the town guard gave them 20 men (they already knew the kobold band numbered a dozen at the most, and yes, we' established in the fiction that kobolds were individually weak). When the captain refused, but gave them a little cash to hire people, they hired 5 NPCs to come with them, and then strongarmed a local mage guild to provide them with something better than an adept (they already had an adept).

When they did get into fights with this enhanced party, they did amazingly well. Few injuries, massive damage outlay (they rolled incredibly well). In the end, they even took down a dragon, though that hit back a lot harder and chewed them up quite a bit. And still, if they're hurt at all, they want immediate clerical healing (they still haven't grasped that the priest they hired can't heal magically, no matter how many times I say it as the character, or as the GM), and when facing any threatening situation they continually want to defer to the NPCs: How do you think we should handle this? What do you think? How do you want to handle this?

I cannot convince them that they're the heroes, they're the ones in charge of this adventuring party because there's no one else like them. I quoted right from the DW book and told them that there might be dabblers in some cities, but my one player is the only wizard (said mages from the previously mentioned guild have a very obvious limitation that my players learned about immediately; they're clearly not wizards the way my player is).

I've told them in character, I've told them out of character. I don't know what else to do. If they keep deferring to NPCs, I'm basically giving them orders all game, and I intentionally created the NPCs to be competent, but not leader types; they don't belong in charge just by dint of their personalities. Does anyone have any ideas on how to get players to stand up a little more?