Generalized Love Letters

I'm new to Apocalypse World (but an old hand at GMing) and I loved the idea of the Love Letters to act as plot hook generator. So I wrote a bunch up for all the base classes (not going to include the expanded classes yet) as a means of trying to generate some drama between PCs and NPCs before the first session. The idea is for the PCs to flesh out what their starting problem is with some NPCs to give them an idea of the more freeform nature of AW while also creating plot hooks and possibly tying PCs together through their issues with shared NPCs. These rolls will be made after the PCs' histories have been decided allowing for possible situations where two PCs have a trouble past but they also have a grudge against a common NPC (Do they team up against the NPC or try to sell each other out?).

Here they are:

Love Letters

Angel
Roll+Sharp. On a 10+ choose one of the following. On a 7-9 choose 2 of the following. On a miss choose 3 of the following.
-Your most recent NPC patient has a life changing injury or condition and you can't help them.
-The “family” feels you didn't do enough for your most recent patient.
-Your most recent patient stiffed you on the bill.
-A chopper boss was your most recent patient. They are keeping an eye on you now.

Battlebabe
Roll+Cool. On a 10+ choose one of the following. On a 7-9 choose 2 of the following. On a miss choose 3 of the following.
-That fool you're after seems to have found a powerful friend here.
-That person you thought you killed? Turns out they aren't as dead as you thought.
-The hardhold's armoury has been broken into and only you know. Too bad you're in charge of it.
-Someone has started a rumour that you're a brainer. You're pretty sure who.

Brainer
Roll+Weird. On a 10+ choose one of the following. On a 7-9 choose 2 of the following. On a miss choose 3 of the following.
-Someone has started a rumour that you're a brainer. You're pretty sure who.
-Your neighbours have been entering the Maelstrom while asleep. Probably your fault.
-Someone swiped one of your Brainer gadgets, but you're pretty sure who it was.
-While scanning someone you saw something that neither of you wanted you to know.

Chopper
Roll+Hard. On a 10+ choose one of the following. On a 7-9 choose 2 of the following. On a miss choose 3 of the following.
-You recently made an example of one of your gang. Their family are pissed.
-You've got a hefty tab with the local bio-baron.
-Turns out that last group you raided in the wastes lives here...
-Someone wants revenge on your gang, and they're no push over. Maybe you know who it is.

Driver
Roll+Sharp. On a 10+ choose one of the following. On a 7-9 choose 2 of the following. On a miss choose 3 of the following.
-You've got a hefty tab with the local bio-baron.
-You left a lover in the lurch last time you were here.
-You made it here with only half of your delivery; you're not sure what happened to the rest.
-A vicious chopper gang might have tailed you here.

Gunlugger
Roll+Hard. On a 10+ choose one of the following. On a 7-9 choose 2 of the following. On a miss choose 3 of the following.
-The local hardholder humiliated you last time you were here.
-Someone tinkered with your gun sights and it almost cost you dearly. You know who it was.
-That fool you're after seems to have found a powerful friend here.
-You've got a hefty tab with the local bullet barren.

Hardholder
Roll+Hard. On a 10+ choose one of the following. On a 7-9 choose 2 of the following. On a miss choose 3 of the following.
-Only you and the local savvyhead know the water purifier is about to conk out.
-Your former second in command has been pushing that you aren't fit to lead.
-You know the neighbouring hardholder has agents who have infiltrated your hold.
-One of your patrols lead by a friend hasn't returned. Their family is worried.

Hocus
Roll+Weird. On a 10+ choose one of the following. On a 7-9 choose 2 of the following. On a miss choose 3 of the following.
-Accidentally you produced a miracle. Your followers are pressuring you for more.
-After recent events you're starting to lose faith in what you do/believe.
-One of your former followers is speaking out against your group.
-Someone has broken into your place of worship, but you're pretty sure you know who did it.

Operator
Roll+Cool. On a 10+ choose one of the following. On a 7-9 choose 2 of the following. On a miss choose 3 of the following.
-You made it here with only half of your delivery; what happened to the rest?
-One of your crew has been stealing from your gigs. You're pretty sure who.
-Negative rumours have preceded you to this community.
-You find a hole in the hold's defensive wall that wasn't there yesterday and only you know.

Savvyhead
Roll+Weird. On a 10+ choose one of the following. On a 7-9 choose 2 of the following. On a miss choose 3 of the following.
-Someone swiped your ratchet set, but you're pretty sure who it was.
-Someone keeps mistreating their gear and it begs you to save it.
-A Chopper boss wants you to soup up his hog but has no interest in paying you.
-Only you and the local hardhold know the water purifier is about to conk out.

Skinner
Roll+Hot. On a 10+ choose one of the following. On a 7-9 choose 2 of the following. On a miss choose 3 of the following.
-One of your clients is stalking you and you can't control them.
-Local establishments have shut you out for some reason.
-Things went sour with your most recent client.
-A chopper boss was your most recent client. They are keeping an eye on you.

I'd like to hear what the AW veterans think about these and I'm also open to suggestions for more options with the rolls.

I think if your players are relatively new to AW these could serve as some good cattle-prods to hook the PCs into conflicts and subplots early.  While your options are good generic hooks, I'd be careful where they touch other players.  So for instance if the Skinner bombs and has to pick 3, he could establish that the Chopper (who might be another PC) is stalking him.  The Chopper's player might go along with that, but then again she might not.  In some sense this is the same as going around for Hx, where you get to just say things about the other characters, but you love letters seem more immediate in time-frame, which could produce some weird results.

But honestly I find that if I'm asking lots of pointed questions during the sessions (especially during character creation and the first session), this kind of stuff comes out and gets established pretty quickly.  Getting the PCs hooked into plots is usually the least of an MC's worries.

The other thing that seems to work well is to throw the players into the deep end of the pool when opening a scene.  By that I mean describe the basic skeleton of an unexpected situation, then ask the player to fill in the details.  The responses are almost always awesome and really give you insight into what the player is thinking or with which parts of the setting or story they'd like to engage.  And you can do it pretty much at any time.  "There's a loud bang outside and a guy staggers in, clearly gut-shot.  He says, 'For chrissakes, Keeler, help me.'  Who is he?"  And when you get that answer, "Who do you suppose shot him, and why?"  Their answers to any or all of these might be, "I don't know," but as players gain experience with the flow of these kinds of games, they very quickly recognize these opportunities for what they are - a way for them to have immediate input into the direction of the story.  So when Keeler's player answers "who is he?" with "my old Pony Express partner - before I became a Gunlugger I used to be a Driver carrying stuff across the Alkali Flats," well, your fiction has grown substantially.

Thanks for the input. Everyone will indeed be new to AW which is one reason I want these to get the ball rolling. I don't trust them initially to fill in the blanks because it's rather counter-intuitive to players who are used to more GM directed narratives. I'll keep in mind the suggestion of starting things off in media res. As for the issue with having interactions between the PCs through these love letters I'm just using the class terms to describe the types of NPCs that may apply. So that Chopper boss isn't THE Chopper just a hog riding leader of another gang (maybe without the motorbike). That being said I was originally aiming for 5 options for each class but had a hard enough time thinking of 4.

This is a fine idea. But, you know this is what Hx is supposed to be doing for you right?

This seems like a fine idea, though it feels like the distinction between these moves and Hx is pretty small if you are doing them all at once, prior to the First Session. They seem to mostly exist in a weird middle-ground between Hx and an immediate situation (such as those produced by regular beginning-of-session moves and, I would say, most Love Letters) which could be neat or could just be awkward, hard to say.

I would definitely be wary of phrasing and framing these in a way that implies things about the Apocalypse that would normally be discovered as part of the First Session. For example, the Brainer move suggests something concrete about people's experience of the Maelstrom (they can 'enter into it'; it's a place), which is likely to have a significant influence on how players answer when you start asking them what it's like when they Open Their Brain, etc. This seems particularly worrisome because the Brainer is the most likely to be influenced by this phrasing, and in most games the Brainer also in turn has the most influence over the group's conception of the Maelstrom. If this is a purposeful MC call -- you really want people 'going into' the Maelstrom to be a thing in your apocalypse -- then that seems legit, but if it's accidental then you might want to consider a more neutral phrasing.

As a broader example, you constantly refer to lower-case 'hardholders' and 'savvyheads', even though the book is actually quite explicit that there is only one Savvyhead, and only one Hardholder. It's obviously enormously tempting to use the playbooks as a sort of 'social role shorthand' for describing NPCs, but it's also kind of lazy, and misses an opportunity to be more specific and evocative. If the assumption here is that the moves are referring to the actual other PCs who have those playbooks, then that should probably be more explicit -- and I think you're still better off simply describing the type of person, and then pointing out to players that the person in question could easily be one of the other PCs. In any case, the current phrasing suggests to the players that they are in a D&D-like world of classes-as-demographics, where they are just one Fighter among many, which is precisely not how the Apocalypse works.

The structure of the moves is extremely generic, which I get is on purpose but which to me seems pretty boring and (again) makes these seem less like love letters and more like an extended variation on Hx (now with NPCs.) It's also weird that the structure of the move implies the options are all negative, and therefore to be avoided, but in fact most of the situations are if-not-benign then just kind of everyday-Apocalypsy. I.e. if I am a player, a 10+ really doesn't seem particularly better than a 7-9, and the only problem with a miss is that it's the MC who is picking, so she might not pick the situations I think are coolest.

It's possible that the generic, soft-serve approach is the right one for the situation you described -- new players, trying to ease them into making contributions -- but I think you should consider just picking one of the situations on each list and then writing a more specific, more gripping move around that situation, which creates both a more immediate situation and a more meaningful choice for the player (as a bonus this will model how moves work in the game better; it sounds like in many situations this will be the very first move the player ever rolls for, after all.)

For example, on the Angel list, I would just take the first option -- Your most recent NPC patient has a life changing injury or condition and you can't help them -- and expand that into a move like:

Your most recent patient has a horrible, life-changing injury or condition, and you don't know how to treat it. Roll +sharp. On a 10+, choose 2, and take +1 forward on trying to do something about it. On a 7-9 just choose 2:
* They are part of a violent gang, and the gang expects you to fix it.
* It's infectious.
* It has something to do with the psychic maelstrom.
* They have essential skills or knowledge that the community cannot do without.
* They're related to you, by blood or by sex.
* It's going to kill them, but not just yet.

On a miss, choose 1. The MC will choose some others, but you don't know about them yet.

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Anyways, just my thoughts. It seems like an okay idea, and my general bias against indiscriminately-applied Love Letters may just be showing through.