So, as I was sitting here bemoaning some other publishers kicking out more traditional RPGs (anything with derived stats) in a genre I'd like to play, it occurred to me that maybe I should just buckle down and come up with my own AW hack to reinvigorate some fun but dangerously tired stuff. What follows is a very preliminary, back of the napkin sort of thing. My own schedule is crazy through October but I don't think that this is an idea that's going away.

It was an age of great adventure and crushing poverty, an age of relentless expansion and skies blackened by coal fires, an age where the secrets of life and death were within our grasp, where other intelligent life found us (or maybe we found them). That all changed this morning. Maybe it was punishment for our hubris. Maybe it was an alien beam weapon but this morning the dead rose to feast on the living, or maybe great cephalopods filled the air. The Atlanteans retreated beneath the waves to be confronted by their own monsters. Even the vampires are in danger of being over run by the tide of rotting corpses. You're barricaded in your [location] but it won't hold forever. What do you do?

Think about how in Bioshock, the apocalypse already happened but in Infinite it happens right around you, how you get that one glance at this beautiful dystopia before it explodes. Mix in some wildly over the top Victorian sci-fi characters (see below), mayhem, carnage and chaos. Start off with a bang and keep that visceral feel of excitement going.

In addition to the usual stats and moves, every character starts with and describes a location in your city and most will have one or two named NPC assistants. With some Ask Questions Like Crazy, you'll have a whole first session's worth of scenery and people.

Playbooks with locations and rough sketch primary stats

The Resurrectionist - Part Angel, part Victor Frankenstein. Starts with a medical laboratory where he can experiment on. . .er. . .make people better. . .er fix. . .er heal, no really, heal people. (sharp)

The Necromechanic - Brings dead tech to life, literally. He can bottle soulfire as a power source. Of course, someone's life has to be drained to charge the battery.  Has something akin to the Savvyhead workshop. (weird)

The Captain - Of an Airship (if you must), of a space ship (if you like, although then the apocalypse has to effect aliens, too) or even of a submarine (my favorite) or maybe he even commands (although not rules) a floating city. His location is, of course, his ship. (sharp)

The Alien Princess - Is she Atlantean, Venusian? Is she a real princess or just the best of what's left behind? Grace, bearing, diplomacy and all that jazz. She can always find solace in her alien temple. (hot)

The Occultist - master of ceremonial magic and probably cult leader. Perhaps he can find something in those moldy tomes to help fight the apocalypse. (weird)

The Action Archaeologist - Don't let anyone fool you. The 90% of archaeology done in the library is the boring stuff you get the grad students to do for you. The Action Archaeologist gets out there and gets his hands in the dirt and blood and monster goop. He's found lost cities, evaded death traps and wrestled gods to bring his treasures back to the museum/warehouse. (cool)

The Ancient One - Is he a vampire? A resurrected Egyptian prince? An alchemist who discovered a formula that only works for him? The immortal is the mastermind with an army of loyal henchmen (part Dracula, part Bond villain) and an impenetrable Lair who just will not stay dead. (sharp/weird?)

When I played a Quarantine, we went with the "roll at -1 if unavoidable" with a side helping of "most custom weird moves are ignored entirely because outside forces (except PC's) just can't reach your brain at all."

Not inspiration per se but I'll plug my own retropocalyptic blog: http://apocalypse.today
Its a few months behind on the updates but there will be articles on the Uranium Spring and Wasteland Weekend events coming around sometime soon.

To your side question - it depends. I find 5 XP per session about average if your sessions are short-ish (ie 4 hours or so) BUT there are some major caveats to that. Sharp and Weird are easier to use frequently than Cool, Hard and Hot, playbook specific moves aside. So anyone with a good score in either (or both) who gets it marked is going to do a lot of Reading/Opening Brain for that session and rack up the XP. Eager To Know, Oftener Right, Inspiring, Visionary, Insight, Norman and even just someone with a good Hot who frequently Seduce/Maniuplates other PCs and similar moves can completely blow that curve.

In one online game I'm in, I've got a Touchstone with Visionary (get up to 3 hold on a PC and spend those to give XP), Inspiring (anyone who rolls to assist my character gets an XP, essentially makes Hx to my character a highlighted stat) and a decent Hot (on any 7+ can offer XP if the PC does what I want). That's going to accelerate the pace of the game just by her being there.

Now, on to KOing the Gunlugger. It looks like you were dealt a bad hand here and trying to make the best of it. My question would really be aside from the usual principles. Given the alternative is everyone having more fun (or less frustration) from your solution? If the answer is yes, then go for it because depending on your group this could be extreme, player dropping out circumstances. Now that said, its an expectation of the setting that the PC's are not actively interested in killing each other. Once they've decided that no longer applies, and there are probably perfectly good in-game reasons, someone IS going to die. Sieze By Force isn't really modeled with an eye towards PC on PC death matches and its pretty easy for anyone to figure out how the math will stack up in terms of armor, weapons and gangs. Personally, and this is my style so take it with a grain of salt, I'd probably sit those two down before the big throw down and figure out who's ok with what. Maybe the Gunlugger is just fine with seizing once, getting an XP for it and buying the Retire To Safety advance or something.

OK, that sounds much cooler than four consecutive Seize rolls! Some of it just comes down to play styles, I think. If the Hardholder isn't trying to surround the enemt or force a surrender or something, he's just wiping them out then yeah, he's just wiping them out.

The barter with string attached is a good example. OK, so Athena the Touchstone has a stack of Smithsonian picture books about ancient civilizations that are worth 1-barter. These are clearly rare, valuable for their knowledge and their beauty and a worthy trade item. Now Litts works in the algae pits. He's not educated and if we were being 100% realistic probably wouldn't care about the pretty pictures. But if Athena uses the "barter with strings attached" to get Litts to work her shifts in the vats this month in exchange for her books, then Litts is interested in the books descriptively because the move says he is proscriptively. Some heretofore undefined aspect of his character emerges that gives him a reason to accept this particular exchange.

I think you hit on something in the Bonds discussion that makes perfect sense to me - the social structure version of accumulating debt hardly needs a rule. Its part of making the world feel real. So if you did a favor for Lits, that's leverage when you go to manipulate him later as is promising him a favor in the future.

Barter has always struck me as a pretty good abstraction of post-apocalyptic trade. Whether its reasonable or not, its true to the genre. The Postman is a great example of the sort of thing you're talking about. He never directly charges for delivery but expects food and shelter in exchange. That's 1-barter per month worth of mail and running through the wasteland.

The hold up the road reloads bullet casings and they'll give you a working bullet for three spent ones, so merchants take bullet casings at five for a bullet. There may be scarcity but there's enough plenty for holds to have bustling marketplaces and support people who make their living buying and selling.

The hardholder will give you room and board for the month in exchange for a gun because his gang has to replace parts on theirs. The gun becomes the standard unit of value because the government, such as it is, will take it. Or maybe your 1-barter is a sleeping bag, a water jug that you can refill and a pre-war ration bar with enough nutrition for a month. In that case you literally keep yourself alive with your living expenses.

Litts is known to keep his word. If he writes out a promise to work someone's shift in the algae vats for a month, everyone will trust him to do it. That note is now barter.

Essentially, the game world and the genre (except The Road) tend to assume that you can get surplus to trade with enough work and it seems reasonable that within even a single generation, any group that trades with outsiders will develop a fairly standard value system.