At the foundation of understanding the tectonic and sedimentary processes in foreland realms lie the crucial questions of which structures may rupture, what magnitude of shaking can occur, how seismicity and climate change might affect the surface-process regime in the near future, and what aspects of the long-term geomorphic and depositional characteristics influence resource generation. While we can place bounds on the answers to the seismicity related questions in plate-boundary settings, the full array of earthquake ruptures, long-term tectonic deformation, interaction between faults, and depositional systems that may be generated in broken foreland settings may mask the desired answers, largely because we do not understand the basic processes that govern them.