So I got inspired and made a thing:
You Carry the Burden of the FutureApocalypse World is no place to raise children. Sometimes, though, a hardholder or scavenger brood makes a pact—with the blasted heath, with the poisoned ground, with the Psychic Maelstrom itself—and the pact is this: OBEY THE LAW AND YOU WILL SURVIVE.
And so a haven is created amidst all the want and suffering, a hardhold of sorts but something more, something almost civilized. Children are born and raised within its limits, taught to fear the world beyond and to obey the law, taught the means of survival. Generations go by, and yet the people remain.
But humanity is curious and heedless; they do not obey the law but break it—in part or in full—every day. And thus every day the broken world chips away at this mote of security and stability, awaiting the day when it will be consumed in desperation and darkness.
The ones known as the Angel, the Battlebabe, and so on... maybe they were born and raised in a place such as this, a place long ago and far away, a place without the constant fear of death and want, a place long since consumed. If so, these are the stories they tell no one, the stories of what they used to be before the broken world made them hard, cool, hot, and weird, the stories of growing up.
Bibliography: Thanks for These Dark Dreams- The White Mountains (1967) by John Christopher
- Clay’s Ark (1984) by Octavia E. Butler
- Invitation to the Game (1990) by Monica Hughes
- The Giver (1993) by Lowis Lowry
- Reign of Fire (2002), directed by Rob Bowman
- City of Ember (2003) by Jeanne DuPrau
- The Village (2004), directed by M. Night Shyamalan
- The Hunger Games (2008) by Suzanne Collins
- The Forest of Hands and Teeth (2009) by Carrie Ryan
- The Passage (2010), parts III-VI, by Justin Cronin
- After the Apocalypse (2011) by Maureen McHugh
- "The Villager" for Dungeon World (2012) by Jason Morningstar
You can
download it here. I haven't playtested it yet (so take it for what it is) but I plan to do so at Gamestorm later this month, assuming I don't get a chance earlier. It'll definitely always be a hack that's 2-4 playbooks long, at most, and will never turn into a big commercial hack (I just don't see the need for it, honestly).