Our gaming group didn't play last Sunday because half of us were out of town, which meant the other half of us got together to watch a double feature of Mad Max and The Road Warrior. All throughout the movies we kept pointing out things that could be interpreted through Apocalypse World
Mad Max- Max is a Driver with a garage and a mechanic who improves his car for him
- Toecutter is obviously a Weird Chopper, but he seems to have a couple of other PCs in his gang
- society hasn't completely collapsed yet, or whatever people are using for money hasn't run out yet
- The Courts is a conceptual hardholder with the threat impulse: to maintain civility (they let one of Toecutter's gang go free)
- a restaurant has a sign saying "BYO food" which is a little detail that's easy to miss but is totally suitable for "barfing forth apocalyptica"
The Road Warrior- Humungus is either a Faceless whose taken Lightning Reflexes, or he's a Battlebabe that has moved onto a Faceless playbook (I like to think that Johnny survives from the first film and becomes Humungus)
- Wez is likely a Hocus, as he makes predictions and seems to perform "blessings" on people, some of Humungus'es gang seem more loyal to him as well, which means...
- Humungus'es gang is actually made up of members of two gangs, probably in order to get a +large bonus
- Max totally manipulates the Feral Kid into leaving him alone by giving him oddments worth 1-barter (the miniature hurdy gurdy), later Max goes aggro on the Feral Kid to leave him alone
- Pappagallo is clearly a hardholder
- the Warrior Woman is probably a gunlugger despite her fondness for crossbows, or maybe because of since...
- bullets are scarce, so this is probably something the MC is constantly using against their players to make them buy
- the mechanic in the oil refinery is probably a Savvyhead
- we decided the Gyro Captain needs a new playbook but with a cooler name than Gyro Captain: the Gyrocat
The Gyro Captain also appears in
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome but doesn't seem to recognize Max. I suggested that this was because the same character is being played by a new player.
All in all, Mad Max hasn't aged very well but it's got some great ideas and it's filled with lots of interesting little details about a modern civilization on decline. The Road Warrior is a better film because the story is tighter and the stakes are higher. I'd recommend anybody who plays Apocalypse World to watch them if you haven't, and if you haven't seen them in a while revisit them and see how you might view them differently.