Yeah, you’ve got it right.

When you make Genlab Alpha characters, you go through all the same kinds of questions that you did in Year Zero. But you’re not all living under the same roof. Your moose scavenger might have an “I hate the dog seer Armstrong 19, because he has seen my death in battle” and now Armstrong 19 is either gonna need to be a fellow insurgent (legit) or it’s only gonna come up when your scavenger goes to the Lodge. Or, maybe, Armstrong shows up as a failure consequence.

It’s really fine when you are where your NPCs are, but since the XP schema relies on you fucking around with your hated NPC and helping your friendly NPC, I think advancement kind of stumbles a bit. Probably players will push to do things where their NPCs are if they need/want the XPs, but I haven’t seen that yet.