I've noticed that in online games, its almost universal that character sheets are completely open. This is good because there's a lot of Moves that encourage some type of interaction. I'm in favor of openness between players. The system is much less about rewarding an "achieve your goals at all costs" stance, so I've found it much more likely that players will appreciate a little rivalry and play along.

DannyK, I'd make it even easier than that:

"ThreeDog came into your infirmary yesterday with a touch of whatever's been going around lately. . . say, what is the biggest threat to public health around here?"

Then let them tell you what kind of things they're interested in facing on the medical front.

I totally get all of that. To me, the easiest way to get more traditional players into the groove of AW is straight up to highlight their high stat in the first session and drive home that advancement comes from using it, whether you succeed in your roll or not. You don't even have to tune the game that much, or at least its never felt like it to me. Get them trying to outpace each other to that first and second advancement.

I remember it took me a session or two of failed rolls to think "hey, the penalty for failure isn't that bad and most of the time it opens up cool situations", then it was on. I was going into situations thinking "ok, how do I use my highlighted stat here" with no real worry about whether or not I was going to succeed.  Its not so much about teaching players to put story first as it is just teaching them to go for broke. If they're making moves, the story will follow from that and they're still getting their crunch fix.

I can't really speak to the Hoarder but in the games I've played, making experience match hasn't been that big of a deal. I feel like that's because the playbooks are unique enough and competent enough at the start that they always have something to offer. Even if a Hoarder is behind on XP,he's still going to have unique abilities and goals that no one else has. Anyone who starts a second character with an advance is going to have 0 XP on their new character at a point in the game where some people are six or more advances (30+ XP) in. In a long running campaign, XP can even become a countdown to retirement. There's only so many advances you can check off before "retire to safety" is the only one left.

As far the actual question, my instinct is "play to find out". Pick a couple of things that you haven't defined who has them or how to get them. Maybe he needs to find a kitten or the headset from a submarine hydrophone. Now let the players do the work. As he looks for it, turn the questions around. "Barnum, who in your hold would have a headset like that? Weaver Bird, does anyone in your cult have breed cats? Are they for food or something else?" Then let dealing with the NPC who has the thing determine the difficulty.

I would love to see a Revolutionary Quarantine in that sort of game with mad science left over from the founding fathers. Of course, once you go that route, you have to watch out because we all know Benjamin Frankenstein flew a kite in a thunderstorm so that he could capture lighting to reanimate corpses.

And I'll try not to give away too many spoilers because this is a very cool and deeply weird playbook.
Does The Mac only get a Highlight from the PC they have the highest Hx to?
I didn't see any reference on the sheet to MC Highlights.

Heh. Well the Quarantine is definitely my favorite of the expanded playbooks, Vincent. The teamwork oriented moves, the pre-session and the special just make it feel so profoundly different from all the others. I love it for the outlook those things imply as much as (or more than) the moves and the facility.

So I've noticed that in many of my AW games I tend to lean towards a more sparse apocalypse - i.e. one holding with maybe a few others known of on the distant horizon, with everything desolate of human life in between.

I'm curious to know a couple things from ya'll:
A) How populated are your apocalypses?
B) What the scale of your regions are - Is travel between holdings measured in days? hours? weeks? Are your holdings a few buildings, a section of a city? How far reaching are the burning flats?
C) Does having a more populated region with lots of little holdings and communes seem counter to the "not enough to go around" nature of AW?

My favorite setting, Fabulous Lost Vegas works like this -
A) The survival rate of The Apoclaypse and its immediate aftermath was about 1%, so that's 20,000-is people in the Vegas Valley. I initially thought 10% would be good but 200,000 is way too big to my mind.
B) There are a lot of little holdings near each other, the big Strip hotels. Most of them are just an armed gang taking over a building with serf farmers trying to grow things in empty rooms with the windows broken out. Each one has a distinct look and feel but even the bigger ones aren't much more than a Large Gang. The big Holds are The Garden, Hoover Dam and (less well-known to anyone) Area 51. The Garden (Mandalay Bay) and Hoover Dam are a few hours apart by car, a day or two on foot. Area 51 is much farther away (80+ miles of bad road) but they can reach you. Outside of that, its all sand worms, zombies and the like until you get to Lost Angels, which is 9to the people in Vegas) one giant haven for raiders.
C) The idea to me is that most of these places are barely holding on. They fight each other and raid the surrounding area constantly for materials and food. The Garden is "rich" because they have a well ordered farm and a fishery. They're also a militant neo-pagan cult that will gut you with a shark-tooth knife. The Hoover Militia has guns, lots of guns and they control the only reliable source of electricity and water. They politely hold everyone in Vegas hostage for these resources but they also secure the dam against Lost Angels.

Its a fairly civilized apocalypse, really, with a radio station a Maestro'D venue, water and electricity (but no one's made a new light bulb in 50 years). That doesn't change the fact that having enough to eat is the standard of wealth, there are 7 automobiles (and a few dozen motorcycles) that still work, the streets are mostly empty, you can get killed at the Fremont St. Market for saying something stupid, your electric and water are spotty and not well maintained unless you're with one of the big groups and even with electricity, you have to find working light bulbs. Everyone who's got something will kill you for trying to take it and everyone who doesn't will kill the ones who do if they can get it.