Genealogies of Apocalypse World Inhabitants

For purposes of session 2 prep and PC backstories, I found it useful to create a generic Genealogy of Apocalypse World Inhabitants for my current campaign.  This assists players and the MC in imagining details about the parents and grandparents of current campaign characters.  YMMV of course because all campaigns are different, but this should give you a good start:

Your Grandparents (you probably never met them, but it's possible)
People who were of childbearing age when the Great Dying began - they lived through it directly; they saw their entire civilization, nearly everyone they'd ever known, wiped off the face of the Earth.  They invented and mass-produced the medical gear used by Angels today; their desperate experiments and perverted ideas of technological progress led to developments like the Violation Glove and airborne biological weapons, in addition to Off-Grid Communities, Cryo Chambers and Survival Vaults.  They experienced the cannibal militias, the toxic rain, the great famine, the freak weather, the constant struggle to obtain clean water, and the initial eddies of the world's psychic maelstrom... and some of them survived.

Your Parents
Their children, who came of childbearing age when the Great Dying had begun to level off.  They remembered much of the above from their childhoods, but by the time they reached adulthood the population had been reduced by 90 percent, and Survival of the Fittest was the rule.  These people lived in very different world from their parents.  For one thing, they lacked any direct experience of the previous civilization, so they had no personal memories of Life Before the Fall, or a world without a psychic maelstrom in it.  Their new ideas of "civilization" were nascent, random, and frequently brutal.  Some of these people began to develop new techniques, new social systems, new ways of living, scrounging, bartering, cobbling together little experiments that were sometimes workable, setting up the first "hardholds", adapting to the harsh realities of life... and some of them survived.

Your Generation
Their children, most of whom are of childbearing age now.  That's you.  You remember much of the above from your childhood, and things haven't changed that much.  If anything the major concepts of the game world have now become crystalized: The psychic maelstrom exists, hardholds exist, and the various character classes (and all their accoutrements) exist.  Welcome to Apocalypse World.

It seems misleading to talk about 'the various character classes exist[ing]' in a timeline: these are explicitly not demographic classes. There is only one Gunlugger, only one Angel, only one Driver. If nobody picks the book, there are (presumably) none.

It's pretty common for this line to be heavily blurred by some play groups, but it doesn't seem wise to me to present the playbooks as 'classes' that are a structural part of the world. This suggests a stability which simply isn't there in the default AW.

Hmm, I dunno about that - the playbooks refer to, for example, "a week’s hire of the protective companionship of a battlebabe or gunlugger".
The "a" suggests more than one could exist. Just that if you have the playbook, you're the angel/hardholder/etc. The one that matters.

I was always very wary of "there can be only one" as a hard rule.  To guarantee group diversity for a better story I get. 

Only one at start, forever, or until another player changes playbooks?  It really narrows down those situations were "the" Brainer choosing deep ear plugs feels like they made a worthwhile decision. 

I do not see a problem with there being others, even npcs with some traits that hint at the playbooks as long as the players represent the archetypes.  The others might only have a trait or two, enough to be described as a certain playbook's name.  Personally I would rather have a non player angel out there in the world than no Angel at all.

As far as the op genealogy idea goes I think it is a great idea.  I am hoping it will give players a greater scope of personal history for their characters beyond what they have done in backstories and Hx.

While there may only be one Hardholder, there are plenty of Warlords out there, some of whom have holdings.  While there may be only one Gunlugger, there are plenty of Brutes out there, most of whom lug guns.  And while there is only one Brainer, there may be plenty of Grotesques out there who whisper shit directly into your tender, delicious brain.  When it's the PCs, it's a playbook.  When it's not, it's a Threat.  The distinction is subtle but important.

My OP said "the various character classes", not necessarily just PC Playbooks.  So we are on the same page.

In point of fact, the rules, playbooks and expansions (not to mention groups in realtime) contradict the "only one" concept themselves, and while I agree with Munin's assertion of its subtle significance, it's not a big deal in realtime because language is like that.  But it's also a totally separate topic.  The point being made by the genealogy is simply that at point X in time, all this technology and all these concepts have come to exist - regardless of how many there are or how you count them.

I have another set of questions that I use when planning for Session 2, which is related to the generations listed above and my need to fill in backstory for the world.  Basically, for every community/group or NPC that made it through the 50 years, I ask the following three questions (the answers to which may change for each generation):

How did you get your food?
How did you get your water?
What drove you / Kept you together?

For example:
                                    VAULTERS        TRIBALS            CULTISTS        THE DUDE        SCROUNGERS
What Did You Do for Food            stored            subt.farm             cannib             cryo              scrounged
What Did You Do for Water           stored            subt.water            stored             cryo              scrounged
What Drove You / Kept You Together  fear              tribe bond            religion           patriotism        desperation

This allows me to more easily fill in details when the PCs get to know NPCs from that community.  The NPCs can talk about what their parents did to get by, tell a story about their grandpa in the great clone war or whatever, without causing logical errors or discontinuities.  Similarly, players whose PCs come from that community will have an easier time brainstorming their own histories.

Very cool, I like that table a lot. I think especially 'what drove you/kept you together' is a great question -- though my own preference is generally not to have any communities that are actually continuous/ongoing since the apocalypse, unless the PCs specifically invoke/suggest such a thing. (The questions work just as well for 5- or 2-year old communities, of course.)

Certainly, YMMV, depends on your campaign and style of play, etc, which is why I didn't include the three questions in the OP.  Just another optional aide for MCs who want to use it.

For sake of determining fiction, you might want to add "How do/did you get your fuel/energy?" to your table.  The vanilla AW setting simply assumes "enough" gas and bullets (or so sayeth the Chopper's playbook, anyway), but I find that giving some thought to energy production/consumption is important.  This will vary wildly with the tech-level of both the "golden age" and the current Apocalypse.  But roughing it out at least gives you some more insight into your fundamental scarcities.

For example, I recently ran a one-shot AW game in which one of my players listed "flashy" as his "adjective for the Apocalypse."  Pulling on that thread a little bit, we all decided on a high-tech golden age.  The hold in which they resided was an island of "civilization" in a sea of scorched, barren wasteland.  We decided that the hold was all glitz and neon, a desperate attempt to cling to a bygone era.  In order to make this work, the place needed loads of power to run all the gadgets and whatnot.  So we decided the holding had an aging Tokamak fusion reactor, but that gasoline was virtually impossible to come by.  The Chopper in the group decided that all the gang's bikes were electric (!).  In this setting, the fundamental scarcity wasn't the power itself, but rather the means to store and transport it efficiently.  Batteries were used as barter currency, and the logistics of going "off the grid" were an important aspect of the setting.

Contrast this with my weekly game, set in AW Appalachia.  The hold has an old coal-gasification plant, so everything local is methane/propane powered.  The streets are lit by gas-lamps and it's frequently foggy.  Totally different setting, totally different energy production and consumption patterns, and a totally different atmosphere/ambience/feel.

Good call and great examples, Munin.  I'm adding that to my campaign notes now. 
Everybody: add the energy question to the list!  (For some groups the answer will be "nothing")

Also noted: Not every question will be equally applicable to every campaign.  It's a brainstorming tool.  Use the questions that make sense for your world.

Obviously, the reason I do this is because I feel it's practical and good, but the length of the genealogy and the exact questions used will differ from campaign to campaign.  Modify it to suit your situation.  It serves two purposes: (a) retaining historical continuity, and (2) adding a layer of verisimilitude to characters and communities so you can really get to know them.