I think you need to do a clean sweep on the all the math and make sure it's working first and then go back and figure out how craft questions to aid DMs in creating on-the-fly challenges.

I haven't playtested the damage/hitpoint changes yet but given the big bump for first level and the gradual addition of more hitpoints as characters increase in level, I can already see leveling feel like going backwards relative to opposition if DMs aren't careful.

It looks like you may have fixed some problematic issues with first level characters in Basic but added the potential for a whole host of monsters to one-shot heroes at even higher levels. 

I feel my DM confidence may be shaken by scenarios like, "Hmmm, do I escalate things in narration or do I now hit the 3rd level Paladin with FORTY-EIGHT points of damage?"  If a monster can kill a "Knight" then Class, Armor (and even almost Level) won't matter a bit in the face of that nuke.

I play to play some Beta soon but I am not going to playtest the damage rules as written but instead come up with something I think will work better (and report on that if there's interest).

Thank you!  I thought that might be the case but wasn't sure.

I have an additional rules question.  (Doing prep for second session today but have never seen a hardholder before in all my games)

It looks like on a 7-9 the hardholder chooses one want in addition to getting surplus, yeah?

On a miss I'm guessing the MC chooses?  And maybe they choose one but maybe they choose more than one or just one?  I'm pretty certain it's not all wants by default.  Like the hardhold doesn't go from getting by to (in the case of our game), having hungry, disease, savagery, idle & reprisals!

Design goals dictate.  If this is more Apocalypse World hack than old skool homage then a light/no death penalty is absolutely the way to go. Certainly more interesting to *me*.  Players playing Dungeon World as a Red Box or OD&D proxy along the lines of LotFP will want/expect a harsh penalty for going zero. Doubt most of your audience is there.

Even Nu School AW has a "cheat Death utterly by taking this debility thing" going on, but maybe that's a good choice for that design. "You wanna know why I walk like this little carver?" (Why I'm less Hard/Hot/Cool) "Pull up a gas can and get wisdom..."

I was planning on running Dungeon World sometime soon but realized I had several questions.  The main one is that there doesn't seem to be anything in the rules about how hit points work.

Is the standard rule that you're dead at 0 hit points but you guys are playing around with different -1 to -10 rules?

I wish I'd seen even more Acting under Fire with resulting 7-9 rolls, both in the campaigns I've played in and in the ones I've run/am running.  I love them.

A worse outcome or a hard bargain is pretty conditional and I'm not sure I can help with that.  A vanilla worse outcome that can be a default back-up option when your brain freezes up is success but some narration about some physical duress that makes sense and a 0-harm (ap) roll for a 16.66% chance that they might actually end up taking 1-harm.  This also gives you time to think of some other possibilities during the course of the harm roll.  e.g. they lose track of someone or something they're attending to or they miss noticing something important.

All the ugly choice grist should be occurring long before they roll that Acting Under Fire 7-9 .  What do your PCs care about, what constitutes a difficult choice for them?  You learn that by the choices they've made previously, from asking questions generally and from asking pointed questions when they open their brains to the psychic maelstrom.

Even if it's early in game, the PCs seem a little one-dimensional so far and you haven't quite got a handle yet on what makes them tick, they likely at least care about their gear, yeah?  Success at a cost of some of their stuff is a reasonable back-up option for me.

"So you're scrambling over the rooftops trying to get away from Kartak and your 9mm ammo box falls out of your pack.  You're going to have to leave it for now if you want to escape clean."

In my experience, if you don't take Make them buy by taking away some of their stuff now and then, their Barter will tend to pile up.

Joe: I bow to your courage.

If I do this the session will be based purely on what the players bring to the table having seen the map, (with a heavy Tank Girl vibe, no doubt), but here's the original source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamandi

I'm pretty sure I have every issue in my mom's attic.

"Who's Jack Kirby?"

My eyes!  They cannot unsee!

I've played or run in five different AW games now and they've all been different enough to continue to hold my interest; I haven't seen that "ONE THING/POINT" that your player has, Hans.

My two comments for now are:

1) Make sure you internalize the AW definition of "Threat".  Threats are varied and some  of them should be difficult to tackle head on.  The PCs are powerhouses if they work together; when the Threat is obvious, hostile, and can be confronted by violence w/o moral or emotional implications, then the PCs are going to mow through it and continually remove those pieces of the world you've created, leaving a barren story landscape in their wake and increasing the potential for a game that may feel less satisfying than you're hoping for.

2) PC-NPC-PC triangles are pretty important.  There are some good AW AP threads that might give you some ideas on how you can get better and building those.  I can give you some of my thoughts on how I try to achieve this if you want to get together and talk about it FTF some time.