It's good for the MC to remember that "speaking truth to a mob" doesn't mean, like, you're mind-controlling any old crowd. They've got to be a real mob, a bunch of high emotions gathered for action. That often means working the crowd up 'til they're a mob, and hoping that you have enough hold leftover to send them home quietly at the end. Awesome.

The other important thing to bear in mind when Speaking Truth To The Mob is that you have to be Speaking Truth. If you're lying, then the move doesn't kick in.

Here's an idea: seeing your badass leader take a bullet between the eyes seems pretty dismaying to me. Impressive and frightening, too. If the PC's hit on their Seize By Force roll, and then select "impress, dismay or frighten your enemy", then the enemy gang leader goes down. Otherwise, she doesn't. This way, you're disclaiming responsibility, like the book says: you didn't decide to have her live, or to kill her off; the dice and the players decided that.

Alternately, if one of the PCs is intent on singling out the leader of the enemy gang, have them Read a Sitch to identify who's in control, and then Act Under Fire to close the distance with them unscathed. If they succeed, they're free to act against the leader individually however they like.

So, I was reaching some old episodes of Black Lagoon, and it occurred to me that Roanapur is about as close as you're likely to get to Apocalypse World in a story set in the modern world. The naming schemes are even similar. Character-wise: Revy is a straight up gunlugger (complete with Battle Hardened, Boodcrazed and Not To Be Fucked With); Dutch is an Operator; Benny is a (boat) Driver; Roberta is a Battlebabe; Balalaika is an ex Gunnluger who changed her playbook to Hardholder; Chan is a Battlebabe who took a gang and Leadership; Eda is the fan made Turncoat playbook. Rock is tough to pin down to an existing playbook; He's definitely a social character, but he's not really a Skinner -- his thing is talking people down, not turning people on. If I had to, I'd probably peg him as a custom playbook  with a move letting him roll Sharp instead of Hot when he's being the voice of reason in an otherwise unstable situation.

I'm currently studying Economics and Anthropology, and this thread got me thinking about how various real life unit of social organization map into Apocalypse World.

So, the smallest unit is the Band. Historically, bands consisted of around 30 or so related individuals, though some large bands might have up to 100. A person might belong to multiple bands (they're mother and father's respective families, as well as their spouses family), but they would typically only live with one band at a time. Most bands were nomadic hunter-gatherers, going wherever food was plentiful, and leaving when it stopped being plentiful. As a consequence of this, most bands were highly egalitarian; private property did not exist, because it was impossible for anyone to "own" anything except what they carried with them on their backs. One member of the band might serve as an informal leader, and another might serve as part-time religious specialist, but no one possessed any kind of formal authority over anyone else. Bands were often temporary, forming and breaking up as people came and went. In AW terms, a band might consists a small to medium sized gang, or maybe a small holding with no real Hardholder.  For gigs, they probably support themselves by hunting or scavenging. The leader is only the leader as long as he doesn't blow his Pack Alpha/Leadership rolls. Forager egalitarianism is modelled but the Chopper's Fucking Theives move. Whoever has the highest weird score is probably the designated "dealing with the maelstrom" guy, but there probably isn't a full time brainer or hocus. Savyheads and Angels are right out.

The next level up is the Tribe, which generally had populations in the 100-300 range and was generally rooted to one location.  The most glaring difference between the mobile band and the sedentary tribe was the rise in pseudo-private property allowed for the accumulation of wealth during an individual's lifetime; however, wealth is not inherited, and there are is no systematic inequality. Furthermore, wealthy individuals are generally expected to use their wealth for the benefit of other members of the community, and those who don't are often violently murdered.Leadership typically fell to a "big man" or village head, however, as with bands, the head had no formal authority; while a big man might succeed in imposing his will on the rest of the tribe by sheer force of personality, his ability to do so rests completely on his ability to command the loyalty of his followers; his power is entirely personal, and there is no institutional structures in place granting power to those who do not achieve it on their own. Economically, Tribes generally supported themselves via some variant of slash-and-burn horticulture (clearing a plot of land, farming it till it can't be farmed anymore, and then moving on to a different plot) or pastoral herding. In AW terms, this is were we find most of our standard Hardholds. The Hardholder wields more power than the Chopper (or anyone else who managed to acquire a gang or holding), but his hold on it is still very tenuous; he's never more than a few blown rolls away from having his power seriously challenged. Furthermore, Hardholdership is not hereditary; just because your dad was a badass motherfucker who managed to carve a holding out for himself doesn't mean that any of his people will follow you for a second unless you are equally baddas. At this level, we start to see crude farming as a gig, and possibly some minor trades. Most of the playbooks will be represented.

Next up, we have the Chiefdom, which typically formed once populations exceed the 300 mark. With Chiefdom's we start to see systematic inequality and inherited power, centred around the Chief. However, social stratification was not cleanly distinguished. Rather than a sharp divide between the haves and the have-nots, we see various degrees of having, with how much you have being directly proportional to how closely related you were to the chief. It's important to remember that unlike in states, which command the involuntary allegiance of non-relatives and are generally have a hard distinction between rulers and ruled (with the ruling families rarely if ever marrying outside of their station), everyone within a chiefdom will be at least nominally related (even if you have to go all the way back to some legendary ancestor said to be common to all members of the Chiefdom to find a relationship between people at the top and bottom of the social pyramid), so what we see instead is a vast, extended tapestry of kinship and marriage, with the Chief and his immediate family having the most power and wealth, and more distant relatives having less. In AW terms, the largest of Hardholds, the kind with bustling markets and manufactures and such might fall into this category. Such holding would typically be ruled over by hereditary hardholders.