I can't find anywhere how you generate the stats for the characters in Apocalypse World. Is it even part of the rules or can you just write whatever you want. If so, why would I put -2 in something when I can have +3 in everything.
[RPG] Stats for character in Apocalypse World
apocalypse-worldcharacter-creation
Related Solutions
There's a discussion on creating custom moves that represent difficulty, first thing in the Advanced Fuckery chapter (p. 268-9). You've got the basic idea already, and your suggestions map right on to some of the ideas. To summarise the ways you can made a move reflect a difficult task:
You can make a general move that lets you change the difficulty with a -1 or -2 when "things are tough", but most groups find this custom move boring/annoying/not a valuable addition. (This one isn't relevant to you particular case but here for completeness.)
You can cover difficulty into a more specific, but still general "when the NPC is strong" move, treating it like the NPC is interfering with a 10+, giving the PC's roll a -2. This is a totally legit thing to do as the MC in Apocalypse World and matches one of your ideas. Just give them a -2, because reading Uncle Richard is just that hard.
You can make a move that just layers itself over another more basic move, modifying its outcome. Something like, "when you're trying to read Uncle Richard it's acting under fire, and the fire is: Uncle Richard is disappointed in you." This can have whatever variations you can think of, and is just like one of your ideas.
You can roll difficulty right into the substance of a move, saying "when you read Uncle Richard…" and then giving a new, more interesting, tailored, but ultimately fictionally disadvantages list of options on 7-9 and 10+.
You can mirror an existing move or make it a subset of options, as you suggested above, but to do it cleanly just crib the options and make it a move all to itself without mentioning the basic move. If you want to do it with style, change the options so they reflect the idea that this move doesn't get you want so easy, making the choices tougher, meaner, and more interesting in their focus on this particular person.
All that is to say, you've got the right idea: make a custom move, however you like, to reflect Uncle Richard being damn inscrutable. Either just make it work, or make it cool, but make it.
And of course, you can always just say, "Yeah, ok. But doing that is Acting Under Fire and the fire is Uncle Richard is disappointed in you." That's just fine for ad hoc difficult situations. When you're finding you want to do that every time a particular circumstance comes up, then that's exactly when you should be (as you were) thinking of making a custom move for it.
I'm the MC that SevenSidedDie was referring to. In our game, we had a Hocus and a Hardholder who were, at times, allies, enemies and mistrustful participants in the advancement of the community they both needed to survive.
The way I handled it was with the PC-NPC-PC triangle. I put all the major NPCs in between the two characters. I put the characters at odds with each other via the NPCs and their pressures / desires / actions. Look at the things they both have stakes in and ask them to solve those problems. For us, it was an easy job - divide the community by Church and State. Let's say Kettle doesn't have enough food, right? She wants to eat. So she goes to the Hocus and says "Hey, Want, I need some food, man." and Want says "let me meditate on that" and then she goes to Mom and says "Mom, I didn't get my rations last week - I need food!" and Mom says "Okay baby, let me see what I can do" and then see what happens.
Find weak points in the status quo, represent them with real human problems and don't be scared to pit the PCs against each other that way. Give them lots of things to agree on, sure, but complicate them. They both want Kettle to get fed, but why does it matter who does the feeding? Want would sure look good if he could scrounge up some rations - that'd make Mom look like a pretty poor leader and paint Want as the real boss of this place.
Think of the NPCs as human beings - simple for the most part, but desperate, sad, in love, hungry, sweaty messy idiots, too. They need things and they turn to the PCs for them. they're manipulative and earnest and nothing complicates things more than people being people.
I find that the most successful games of AW aren't about mutant hordes or unexploded nuclear ordinance but the way those scary things force people together or apart. The question you ALWAYS want to be asking is "what do these people want out of life?" and then let that guide you forward.
Best Answer
Follow the instructions in the playbooks. Step two (after NAME) is STATS, which tells you "Choose one set:" followed by a list of stat arrays that are unique to each playbook.
The playbooks were designed so that all the rules for players are in the playbook and the Moves sheet, and the rulebook is really only necessary for the MC. Playbooks are essentially guided pick-lists: do exactly what the playbook says, to the letter, and you'll have a character ready to play in a matter of minutes.