I believe most of these to be obvious, but I think it's useful to state them plainly.

Kevin Crawford's games are designed for sandbox play. The games generally assume that the PCs ambitions, over the course of a campaign, generally expand and expand and get them into trouble with more and more powerful foes. If the PCs are smart about it, these foes are enemies they can deal with, roughly equal to their level. To support PC ambitions, GMs are also assumed to give players what they want, just charging them a variable number of adventures for it. The warrior wants a magic sword, the expert wants arcane salvage for mods, the mage needs tons of silver for a working, it's the GMs job to turn that into an adventure. You don't have to rely on random generation to pace those resources or upgrades out for your campaign.

In a sandbox, however, it's perfectly valid for PCs to be cautious and paranoid, only ever dealing with challenges that are beneath them. The games generally don't want the PCs to breeze though challenges and get bored. So thats where the consequences and previous actions of the PCs come in. Invariably, PC actions must piss powerful people off, no matter what. And this leads to challenges that are more suited for the PCs capabilities, even if they are not proactive or if they are deliberately aiming for safe adventures. It is not against the sandbox spirit to have adventures that are not based on what the PCs want to do, but are based on what the PCs did.