What a great idea for a campaign! And just in time for it, MIT Press just published Nicholas de Monchaux's Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo on how Playtex seamstresses sewed the 21-layer Apollo spacesuits, and other fascinating tidbits.

Axes we already know well and love wisely.

In my Ozarks Ghostwood setting (1919 flu was much worse, 50 years later labor is still scarce and the forest is full of ghosts and danger) barter is typically moonshine (I figure about 4 gallons is 1 barter, or 1 pint for a day's food and shelter), salt, tobacco (smoke keeps ghosts away), black powder, or bullets.

In a Road Warrior-esque setting we (somewhat tongue in cheek) used as currency those shiny silver discs the ancients seemed so fond of, whose purpose was lost in the mists of the golden age. We joked about someone stumbling across a Netflix warehouse and riches unimaginable, and all the trouble that would come from that.

In the movie The Book of Eli water was very scarce, so he traded those little foil-wrapped cleaning packs from KFC for a recharge of his iPod.  Not that they would still be good after 30 years, but Apocrypha is the cousin of Apocalyptica, so whatever suits.

run that with a bluegrass soundtrack.

Oh man, a bluegrass soundtrack. That would be sweet! There was a giant bluegrass festival going on across the bay from where I was running, but not loud enough to reach us.

I ran this setting for the first time on Sunday, and liked it a lot. The PCs' land train was ambushed by baptist slavers. The 16-year old Angel with the healing hands took NOT TO BE FUCKED WITH so she counts as a small gang in a fight. The Battlebabe went into a fight with a torch and came out with a cannon (speaking of "Neutralizing the Artillery") and unexpected relationship drama.

Combine sex moves? Sure, no problem, but it's going to take months of work, you're going to need the battlebabe to help you with it, it's going to mean exposing yourself and others to serious danger, and you're going to have to add a rotating bed and a disco lights to your workplace first.

(I was torn between those and .. is going to take hundreds of tries and you're going to have to take your organ apart to do it.)

I haven't run for a Hocus yet (the Hardholder switched to Savvyhead instead) but I was thinking I'd leave the question of what's "speaking truth" to the player, the same way I trust their judgement when reading a charged situation. "You're saying this situation is charged? I guess it is, then. Cool." I don't see it as my job as MC to pass judgement on the Hocus' player, just to be a fan of the Hocus and make the world feel real and so forth. But I'll come back and reread this after I have firsthand experience.

I don't use Gunluggers for one-shots, because they make violence too easy an option.  Although note that even with NTBFW (acting as a 3-harm small gang in battle) and 2-armor and choosing "take little harm" on a seize by force roll, a Gunlugger will still take 2 harm from a 3-harm 1-armor large gang. Not likely to be much fun for the now-dying other PCs, though.

Here's my thinking after running a dozen one-shots (8 Hatchet City and Blind Blue, 4 Operator and Crew): For one-shots I like to use an Operator with the other PCs being her crew, with an NPC or two as well. The players talk over what sort of moonlighting gigs the Operator should take (since that influences what characters are good, or rather, players choose characters they want to play, and Operator chooses gigs that suit those well), we work out back story and Hx and highlights and all that. For a 4-hour 4-player one-shot I don't offer all the characters. I put out Vincent's trifolds (MUCH better than the teensy playbooks) for Operator, Angel, Battlebabe, Brainer, Driver, Savvyhead, Skinner, skipping the ones with large casts of NPCs (Chopper, Hardholder, Hocus). After the characters are created, the Operator makes her starting Moonlighting roll, and things develop from there.

I used to skip Savvyhead, but after seeing one played very well at GPNW I offer them now. Possibly I'm being unfair to the Gunlugger, but I prefer running one-shots in low-firepower settings, where a gun is a serious edge, and I find conveying a sense of danger is much easier without the 'lugger.

Operator and Crew doesn't show all the deep intricacy of the long-running campaign game, but it is sharp and fun and shows the players how the rules and setting work and gives them an appetite for more.

I have a much longer and more detailed description of how I run AW one-shots that's available for the asking via email.  And by no means am I claiming this is the best method. It's just a method that's worked well for me (and others) in the time constraints I'm usually under, and I continue to refine it.  I'll be using it at Endgame's 10/16 minicon, and at Go Play SF Bay's "Taste of Apocalypse World" 10/21 at Endgame, and no doubt a bunch more times.

Thanks for pointing that out, just in time for me to fix it for Sunday's game at Endgame. (Using scissors and tape -- how old school.)