Apocalypse World is a table top role playing game by Vincent and Meguey Baker which is famous for creating the Powered by the Apocalypse family of games. In it you play as cool, hard, hot, sharp, and weird people trying to make it in the ruins of the world. Obviously, post-apocalyptic settings in RPGs are common enough so Apocalypse World was nothing new in that regard. The setting is the standard waste land plus a psychic maelstrom for extra weirdness but what really set this game apart from all precursors is the mechanics.
Apocalypse World is a 2d6 roll over system with an explicit number of discrete actions available to the players called moves. The basic moves are do something under fire, go aggro, seize by force, seduce or manipulate someone, read a person, read a sitch, and open your brain. The anatomy of Powered by the Apocalypse moves are covered in its write up so I'm only going to mention the one really unique move: open your brain.
When you open your brain to the world’s psychic maelstrom, roll+weird. On a hit, the MC will tell you something new and interesting about the current situation, and might ask you a question or two; answer them. On a 10+, the MC will give you good detail. On a 7–9, the MC will give you an impression. If you already know all there is to know, the MC will tell you that.
This is a basic move meaning all characters can do it from the start. By default moves are things that the Master of Ceremonies calls for based on how the players describe their character's actions. Open your brain is the obvious exception and it's basically written in a way to spoon feed a player plot critical info. On a certain level this is emblematic of how Apocalypse World operates. The world is meant to have a certain kind of verisimilitude but everything is player facing. The core book directly instructs the Master of Ceremonies not to plan out plots. Instead they are supposed to take moves against the PCs whenever they roll six or less. These moves aren't mechanized like the player moves but include such fun stuff as capture someone, announce future badness, take away their stuff, or turn their move back on them. After this the MC should ask “what do you do” and follow up from there. This means that rolls never result in nothing. Either something good happens, something bad happens, or both but something is always happening to the players. In service of this is the assumption that the world has no status quo. By design everything is in constant flux.
So who is all of this happening to? The single most expressive part of the game is probably the eleven playbooks from the core book. These are the angel, the battle babe, the brainer, the chopper, the driver, the gunlugger, the hardholder, the hocus, the operator, the savvyhead, and the skinner. Some of these are exactly what they sound like but some aren't. The angel is a medic which limits them to a support role while also making them the MVPC. The brainer is a creepy psychic specializing in mind reading and control. The chopper has a motorcycle gang. The hardholder has a base of operation and people in it. The savvyhead is a mechanical savant. The skinner is just really sexy. While there is some overlap between playbooks most of them are very different. The hardholder and the chopper both have gangs but one is based around mobility while the other is based on a secure location. The gunlugger and battle babe are both combatants but gunluggers are about overwhelming offense while battle babes are more about versatility. Every play book has unique actions or minor super powers but a lot of the character improvement is just changing the associated stat on basic moves to your play books best stat. This allows all of the play books to shine generally or just fixate on their specialty.
There are a lot more things in Apocalypse World but you are probably better off just getting the core book. The first edition of the game is available as a free PDF here. Everything I've written is about the first edition. If you want the second it will cost you money. Vincent and Meguey Baker's stance on the rules and general structure of Apocalypse World being used in other game systems has and continues to be: do it! As such the Powered by the Apocalypse family tree has grown huge.
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