So, how do you go about making a good setting for Apocalypse World? For me, there’s two big steps to getting to good apocalyptica. First, figure out a basic state of the world. Dry and cold and grey? Moldy and hot and damp? Over-run lush, with broken stuff sticking through? Then I layer something everyday onto that, like say, clothes on a line.
Dry etc: There’s a clothesline with the usual shapeless drab garments, but on the end is a little girl’s party dress dancing in the wind, so bright a blue your eyes nearly weep with relief. Or: It’s too cold to wash anything, and there’s no water to spare anyway, but there are some people beating clothes against a pole. Little clouds of dirt billow around them. Some of the specks are florescent and seem to float away instead of fall to the ground
Moldy etc: Nothing’s ever really dry, but people keep trying. If it’s wet and you don’t need to wear it at the moment, you hang your clothes on pegs over the smoke-pits to try to get the wet out, or at least the stink out. If you wear wet stuff too long, red goo starts to form in the creases. The goo eats through clothes, and maybe through skin, too?
Over-run: The vines have started to creep along the clothesline already, even though the holders cut them down a week ago. The flowers have violet centers and smell like fruit three days past ripe. They drip gobs of sticky sap on everything. It sounds like a thousand leaky pipes all out of sync.