I dunno, a lot of these feel like things you could do with existing playbooks + one or two custom moves. I guess it's just a matter of taste, but I really enjoy putting a serious twist on existing types (I played a lot of WoD back in the day) over inventing a new playbook for what is mostly a shift in colour, not activity/moves.

This isn't intended as some kind of threadcrap; it's just a difference in player preference I've noticed elsewhere as well. I guess I wonder if there are players out there who really want to be playing these types of characters, but feel like they can't because they have a much more set-in-stone idea of the colour for some of the existing classes.

I think you have to look at the Dark Futures you've written for your Fronts, and how the individual Threats work into that -- there's no need for a countdown if there isn't some forward progress that is going to happen (to some degree) with a certain degree of inevitability (barring PC interference.)

One thing that I find tricky is coming up with at least a few points on the clock that can be both prescriptive & descriptive -- so that the clock can advance for fictional reasons as well as according to whatever moves or arbitrary schedule I've come up with.

That said, I haven't got a lot of use out of countdown clocks yet in the current game I'm MCing -- but I also don't feel like my pacing is off-kilter, either, which seems to be the main use of the clocks-as-a-tool.

Wow, those are remarkably harsh 10+ results.

Taking cover behind a wall and laying down supressive fire, is that Sieze by force (Siezing and holding a safe spot) or Acting under fire? (Acting to keep foes away)

That sounds like two actions: taking cover and laying down suppressive fire. Taking cover is probably acting under fire, while laying down suppressive fire could be any of: going aggro (if you come out of there you get shot), seizing by force (seizing their attention, therefore preventing them from doing anything else for the moment), supporting another PC's move (if you are suppressing them while another PC does something), interfering with another PC's move (if you are suppressing a PC with your fire.)

Of course if the suppressive fire part is not actually doing anything important, it could just be part of the description of how they effectively take cover -- in which case it would just be acting under fire. But if the goal is to do two important, separate things -- both prevent yourself from being fired upon and then suppress the enemy position -- that should require two actions and two rolls.

If you are trying to kill someone in a straightforward fight then generally you are seizing their life by force (and once you have it, you are ending it.) Or you could seize something else by force, and as long as they are opposing you you can just focus on doing tons of Harm to them while you go about your other business. Alternately, you could use other moves to get yourself in a position in the fiction in which simply shooting them in the head or otherwise killing them would be trivial.

For example, you could pull out your gun and Go Aggro on someone to let you tie them up -- then kill them if they let you tie them up, because what are they gonna do about it at that point? Of course, if they think you are just going to kill them, they will probably choose to suck it up rather than go along with your demands -- but if you have a big enough gun then sucking it up is the equivalent of getting shot in the head, so you just killed them via Harm anyways. This is less effective than seizing their life by force because on a 7-9 result they can get out of your way instead -- but if you are a -1 hard +3 cool Battlebabe, then this is probably still your most effective route to killing someone.

In the bunker example, it depends on what sort of opposition you have. If there are armed people defending the bunker, and they are willing to fight you for it, then you are probably seizing it by force -- if you stand outside the bunker with your rocket launcher and grenades and shout out 'clear out of there, or I'll turn your bunker into an ez-bake oven!', that would probably be Going Aggro.

Part of the difficulty distinguishing the two (for me, at least) is determining whether the PC has sufficient positioning to Go Aggro. I mean if the moment the PC steps up to the bunker to deliver her threat, the guys inside open fire... there was no chance to Go Aggro -- it's seize by force or nothing. In order to Go Aggro on someone you have to take the initiate to threaten them before they are ready to just straight-up fight you.

How about taking one of the hardholds that is a Threat from the first Front and instead/also making them a Threat in the second -- a hold that has already somehow given in to decay/savagery/hyena worship? I mostly suggest this because you have like three hardholds in the first Front, and also because I think Threat crossovers are awesome.

I think it can help, to some degree, to try and figure out what the Psychic Maelstrom's angle is: what sort of perspective is the Maelstrom bringing to your Apocalypse World, above and beyond answering the PC's questions?

One way to do this might be to think of it in terms of fronts -- does your Psychic Maelstrom represent a fundamental scarcity? If so ideally it's one that you don't already have in the game -- so it can interact with existing fronts freely, instead of merely appearing to be the instrument of one or another of them. Or maybe, instead of that, your Psychic Maelstrom represents the opposite of one of the scarcities -- your Maelstrom is all about satiation, or generosity, whether in a straightforward or a warped sort of way.

This is different than actually making your Maelstrom a Front, by the way -- I'm definitely not advising that (unless you already have an idea for it). I'm just saying: maybe it would help to think of it in terms of a scarcity, as a way of getting an angle on it. A hungry Maelstrom has a different character than an envious one -- it wants different things from the players, and it provides different perspectives as well.

Similarly, you could use the Threat structure (what does it mean to have a Maelstrom that is a Warlord (Hive Queen), or that is a Grotesque (Mutant), or that is a Landscape (Prison) or whatever. Again, doesn't have to actually be a Threat, but you can use the language (and then borrow the Moves, even, for when the PC's miss.)

Another thing that's already been mentioned is the Questions. Hopefully you've already been following through on the game's advice: the first time the character Opens Their Brain you have to ask them what it's like for them to interact with the Maelstrom. In terms of the aesthetic of the visions and such -- for me, those should be based almost entirely on what the player brings to the table. In our first game we all had very different visions of the Maelstrom, but they ended up sharing certain commonalities -- but how your Gunlugger gets her answers vs. how the Angel gets his, I think you want to follow the players' leads. And keep asking more questions about 'what it's like' until you feel like you've got what they have in mind (or until you force them to have something in mind.)

But apart from questions about the Maelstrom, the sort of questions the Maelstrom asks seems like a really high-potential area to me. I remember one of the first times a character Opened Their Brain, and the MC question went something like:

MC: Who was your best friend/closest ally, back in <previous home>?
PC: Uh... <describes a person and a situation and how it worked.>
MC: Okay. Actually, there was someone else you liked more, but you've forgotten them.

At which point I was like 'whoa!' This Maelstrom means fucking business.

And of course the Maelstrom has particular interests -- it wants to know specific kinds of things, which is where some of the above bits about 'the Maelstrom's perspective' come in. An Envious Maelstrom might tend towards exactly the sort of question described above -- asking about nice things and then snatching them away for its own use -- while a Maelstrom made up primarily of dead children might ask lots of simplistic, experiential questions ('what's it like to do X?' 'what does that taste like?' etc.)

Ghoul feels really out of place to me -- maybe just because it doesn't have the same iconic status as the others. Also the name makes me think that they are all about eating the flesh of the living, not remaining aloof and distant? To my mind, vampires already cover the whole 'undead and sexy' thing pretty thoroughly -- if there's another kind of undead thing, it needs a new angle or it ends up feeling like an also-Vampire. If they're a zombie-remake the blurb should at least mention the overwhelming hunger, right?