Who's the average person of your apocalypse

Taking our eyes off the protagonists, who are the average people who populate your hardholds and wastelands? How do they survive? What do they believe in? What do they fear? What do they know of the world? What can they make for themselves, and what is beyond their ability? Can they read? Can they farm? Can they work metal? Can they make a world for themselves, or are they at the mercy of more powerful individuals? What is their capacity for violence? What is their capacity for love?

I always saw 2 sorts of guys: Plebs and Threats. Mostly this is following off the Hardholder's underlings. There's going to be oddities like  the Hocus or the News whipping the proles into a frenzy, but it's a basic breakdown.

The Pleb is someone who's scraping 1-2 barter a month from the corpse of the world. They don't have much power but are willing to do anything to survive. That probably means something more like drinking tainted water or kissing gangster ass than raiding. They're the victims of everything, and when things go wrong on a large scale they're the first to suffer. They're probably way tougher than you or me, but not the characters. I don't think it'd take much to upend their lives, since we look through crosshairs and have to get the players doing stuff. They'd be willing to swing towards whatever offers salvation, just to keep things interesting. They're still important, because everybody needs to eat.

Threats are pretty self-evident. They desire power on whatever level, and generally have pretty simple desires. Most of them would be too stupid or lack the vision to change the world in a deliberate or thought-out way. I think of Roark from the example of npc design as a good representative of the average threat: He wanted to burn down the Hold, so he did, and now he wants a bubble bath. There's scarier people out there, but they aren't really average

Depends on the scale of the game. If I want it to be a hand-to-mouth continuous struggle, they are filth-digging peasants. They take around 2-harm to kill. PCs are way stronger, but this means it's just a case of having a slight chance in an oppressively uncaring world

If it's a greater scale of game, they are people. Actual people. They have names and occupations, some of them have weapons. They STILL take around 2-harm to kill. Still, the PCs are really quit strong, they are movers and shakers, they can take on big world changing struggles and be better, bigger, stronger, hotter, than all this good, big, strong, hot people that surround them.

Now, if I want to bridge into anime levels, every NPC is a wacked up psycho freak that managed to survive the apocalypse. They are insane, brilliant, individuals with over the top emotions and motives. PCs are EVEN BIGGER. Simply because of the fact that mechanically, they are that much stronger. Roleplaying-wise, this is tricky because AW doesn't normally have this kind of scale in mind, so the MC agenda has to be slightlyyy modified.

TL;DR: If you want them to be saving the town, the NPCs are all about that filth digging. If you want them to save the world, the NPCs need to be BIG.

What is it like in your current campaign?

The Pleb is someone who's scraping 1-2 barter a month from the corpse of the world. They don't have much power but are willing to do anything to survive. That probably means something more like drinking tainted water or kissing gangster ass than raiding. They're the victims of everything, and when things go wrong on a large scale they're the first to suffer. They're probably way tougher than you or me, but not the characters. I don't think it'd take much to upend their lives, since we look through crosshairs and have to get the players doing stuff. They'd be willing to swing towards whatever offers salvation, just to keep things interesting. They're still important, because everybody needs to eat.

When you're playing, what does that "scraping 1-2 barter" entail? Hunting, fishing, farming? When they dress, is it in tatters from the Golden Age, or do they know how to make cloth and leather? When their lives have been upended, what is it they long to get back to?

When I think about average denizens, I generally think of that truck gang from The Road, The Wretched (the poor fuckers begging for water) from Mad Max: Fury Road or the children from the ending of the BBC drama Threads (Can't find any good links to that particular scene, but if you need inspiration for a particularly bleak Apocalypse World, give the whole thing a watch).

Like life in Apocalypse World, they are brutal, nasty, and full of surprises. Make them slightly alien. Not unknowable. Just every so often have them react to situations like no sane modern person would.
Example: a Gunlugger PC kills a troublemaker, then watches in horror as a dozen children descend on the poor bastard in a feeding frenzy. After all, he's dead anyway, and that's perfectly good meat.

I don't think how they live is as important; worldbuilding like that is fairly simple once you know the basics of societies. Playing up scarcity and barfing forth apocalyptica are easier to forget and much more important.

After playing the game for a few years, I've started feeling that things get rather hollow when I don't have a handle on everyday life for normal people. It all just starts feeling like a neverending parade of threats among apocalyptic set dressing, where the people who get some description are mostly gang members, cultists, or casualties. Let's call it a part of making everyone human.

It depends a lot on the PC's. For example, if the crew includes  the Hardholder, the Maestro 'D, the Hocus and The News, they're pretty much going to determine what the average person is. The average person is part of the civilian population of the hold, who does whatever it is the hold options say he does. Some of them will be patrons of the establishment or members of the Hocus's followers and most of them listen to the radio. If the hold has a bustling market, some of them are out of town traders. Basically, anyone who can be considered "average" has a minor role in the society of the game.

In an even more general sense, my impression is that the wealthiest, most impressive hold has a quality of life roughly the same as the Old West. Most people are going to be finding food (by scavenging or growing), finding something they can sell to traders (like mining or scavenging) or offering a service to the people who do those things and their primary concern in life is to keep living. The average person doesn't have too much trouble covering their 1-barter a month as long as they're willing to put in the time. They won't think much of saving up or changing the world. Doctors are rare, so everyone knows a little first aid or folk remedies. Violence is sadly common, so everyone is armed, even if it's just a rusty old kitchen knife they've sharpened. On the whole, though, a sense of a larger community holds together. There are only a couple of fundamental scarcities and when people don't get them, the Hardholder and company have to find a way to cover the gaps. (Side note, now I want to play a Battlebabe Shreiff!)

In a poorer area, where the average person struggles to find 1-barter a month, it's more like a game of This War Of Mine. People break up chairs in ruined buildings for firewood to survive the night or kill each other over an MRE. Everyone is still armed and they're a lot more likely to fight to the death if the alternative is losing one of their key survival tools. Any kindness is a huge surprise to them, to be taken advantage of mercilessly or to be repaid by someone dead shocked that not all humans suck. The biggest social unit is more "pack" than "society". The fundamental scarcities are basic survival needs. When they're not met, people get sick and/or die.

When you're playing, what does that "scraping 1-2 barter" entail? Hunting, fishing, farming? When they dress, is it in tatters from the Golden Age, or do they know how to make cloth and leather? When their lives have been upended, what is it they long to get back to?

It's always going to vary from game to game, based on what the players come up with, so I haven't really got an answer in mind. One game's had people manufacturing weapons in a busted aircraft carrier and eating refined seaweed and diseased fish, and when those started running out some PCs started raiding for unopened supply drops from the apocalyptic wars, while the touchstone fermented rebellion. There was a decent marketplace so nobody had a sort of consistent style, although the Threats had old uniforms and similar. Another one had a town run by an npc warlord with a chess motif where they were literally called Pawns, and the only entertainment they got before the skinner rolled in were public executions and crystal meth. The only consistent elements are that they're just scraping by with enough stuff to eat and keep a roof over their head, if something goes bad on a large scale they're in serious trouble, and they'll run to anything perceived as an improvement.

I personally wouldn't go for pure scavenging as a basis for a society. 50 years is a long time, and it's more interesting to me if a tin of spaghetti is a luxury item, but it's a legit approach. Most games descend into cannibalism anyway, in my experience.

In my current game, the apocalypse was due to a more-or-less unsuccessful alien invasion that still managed to screw large portions of the environment and infrastructure. In discussion, it was decided that we were going for a fairly classic 'Mad Max' aesthetic, but that the players weren't actually that interested in basic material shortages like food and water (they were much more interested in shortages of things like trust, love, and security), so the game occurs in a valley with water, surrounded by hills, in the middle of an huge desert, but with several different hardholds and gangs in the valley.

So what the basic person does varies wildly depending on what settlement they're from and what its industries are:

In the trading town/gateway to the valley, many are merchants, some scavenge the desert, while a few do basic farming and a fair number of others refine oil into gasoline.

In the town made in a giant alien fungus everyone works with fungus, farming the edible stuff, or using the stuff that extracts oil from the ground to do that (for shipping to the people who refine it).

In the other major farming town, people mostly do more conventional farming, plus animal husbandry (of the fanged chickens, mutant cows, and spider-goats...the last also provide spider silk, for use in textiles).

In the underground bunker/town started by survivalists, they mostly make ammunition (they have the facilities for that, there) and trade the ammunition and occasionally bits from their supply of old-world stuff for the food they need.

In the town built into the crashed alien space ship people mostly harvest the various bits of the ship (particularly the various liquids the ship produces, many of which are potent drugs of one sort or another...the glowing green stuff is reliable birth control, while the pink stuff is basically cocaine + PCP, and so on), or organize the above efforts, and some do a bit of basic farming as well.

In the PC Maestro D's place (which is separate from any of these, almost a mini-hardhold in its way), the people make their living providing music, food, and/or sexual services to travelers between the various communities already mentioned, plus all the mini communities that exist between them.

All these communities also have gangs/militaries who receive money for their work or raid those who lack their organization/firepower.

So...yeah. That inevitably varies quite a bit from place to place. In all of them I agree that it's mostly scraping a few barter together a month, but probably more like 2 than 1 most times and places. In the course of a year they can afford a new set of clothes, some livestock, some tools, and the occasional small 'extravagance'. But it'd definitely be less in an area where food and water are more scarce.

That sounds quite neat, and is probably a good way of handling a situation where material scarcity is not very interesting.

Another question: what's their relation to the psychic maelstrom. Do they ever open their brains, and why?

That sounds quite neat, and is probably a good way of handling a situation where material scarcity is not very interesting.

Thanks. I was quite pleased with it. :)

I actually built each community as a Hardhold (though not necessarily within the starting Hardholder limitations), just in case a PC conquered one. And so I know what resources they have available (vehicles, gang size and weaponry, relative wealth, etc.)

Another question: what's their relation to the psychic maelstrom. Do they ever open their brains, and why?

I think that's gonna vary quite a fair bit, too. I know in my game, the people living in the alien fungus use psychedelics to Open Their Brains regularly, and the ones in the alien space ship do so upon occasion as well (or do other stuff with weird alien technology to do so). The former survivalists receive visions when they pray, sometimes, too. The other communities are more secular/involved with the physical, and do so very rarely if at all.

My plan for my next setting is:

"When you drink the unfiltered water that mists down from the cavern roof, Open Your Brain"

Only madmen and geniuses drink the water that comes from above. You'll probably be fine if you drink it though. Probably. NPCs that have no choice are likely to go insane, mutate, and die horribly if they drink it enough, so I think it's a pretty neat way to link it all together.