I’ve recently started a game of Apocalypse World, and one of the players created a Driver, but, instead of a regular vehicle, he’s walking around in a lumbering exoskeleton, a la Ripley.
I wonder if anyone has advice on what might need adjusting mechanically. Would you make any hacks or adjustments to make this work? Some of the assumptions of driving arriving in vehicles don’t seem to apply very cleanly here.
Huh, that’s a bit tricky.
I think part of the Driver is that they can pick up and leave any time they want and this character doesn’t seem to have that.
This is very off the top of my head, but that exoskeleton feels more like an alternative vehicle to me. I think I’d be fine with a Driver having that type of thing, but not as their only vehicle, basically. But I’m not an expert AW player so I may be completely off here.
Take a look at the Landfall Marine playbook for AW.
Good answers.
The player’s concept is pretty specific: the Driver is paralyzed from the waist down, so relies on this exoskeleton to get around. I agree that the Driver playbook isn’t quite right for this, but we’re going to try to make the best of it rather than “start over”.
The Landfall Marine is entirely wrong (the character is not at all military agent), but the rules for the exoskeleton might give me some things to work with. Thank you for the suggestion! I am rereading the rules there now.
I wonder if there are any other takes on this?
Maybe switch in some moves from other playbooks? Without having checked, I imagine the Faceless could be good for this, depending on what flavor the character is in other ways.
A good idea! The player is happy with the playbook and the moves, though, it seems (I also offered to use some different playbooks or moves, as you suggest here). I’m just looking for what rules-based issues might come up with representing this “exoskeleton” in the context of AW’s rules. Some are not entirely obvious!
Cool, you’re way ahead of me. 
Honestly, I think you can wing it for the most part, or have a dialogue about it when it turns up. I suspect there will be times when it will work well to treat it like a vehicle and times when it will make more sense to treat the character like a person who maybe has some armor. Much of it can probably be handled with fictional positioning.
I would take a look at the Road War moves and try to figure out how to best apply them. Deal With Bad Terrain and Shoulder Another Vehicle probably work as-is (though there may be differences in when the fiction dictates they should come into play compared to someone driving a car), while Outdistance and Overtake are probably less relevant (unless this exoskeleton is really fast, or in situations where they’re racing against other vehicles with similar speeds). Or maybe they work fine if the exoskeleton just has very low speed? I haven’t looked at that part.
The more I look at it, the more I think you’ll be fine treating it as a regular vehicle that probably just has a low speed? Maybe give it speed -1 in exchange for something else?