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.