Why does a social encounter require two pages and a combat encounter only a short description?
Here is an outstanding pair of social
score adventures we had in Blades in the Dark: trick your rival into attacking another faction while your companions set up another faction to take the hit, so you tip off the Bluecoats and frame your rival for your crimes. That was an entire session. Lots of stuff happened, and it was awesome. I doubt
@Manbearcat needed two pages of material to prep and run it. (In fact, I doubt he did much prep at all for it.)
Neither Social Scenes nor Exploration Scenes (or any brand of conflict really...I ran 2 x 4e games from level 1-30 and another 1-10 on the skimpiest prep possible...often none at all) should require anything more than the core engine stuff of the game. For the scene you're talking about, all I needed was the stuff what was already present:
* The broad flourish details of Charhollow (the working class district in the middle of Duskvol) and its Dots (in case we need them for a Fortune Roll).
* The broad flourish details of Barrowcleft (the "prairie/farm" district on Duskvol's far west flank) and its Dots (in case we need them for a Fortune Roll).
* Your Rival Stazia's details as we constructed them -
Stazia (Rival - Apothecary) – Quality 3, Master, Mad Scientist, Connected, Volatile.
* The Tier of The Cabbies and Bluecoats and their particulars.
* The established fiction of the entire game, the touchstones of the game generally, and the Information Gathering for this Score in particular.
That is it. No prep needed. From recollection, that play loop featured like 6 different scenes?
1) The setup to get Stazia to the Barrowcleft eel-fisheries processing center via his nephew and brother.
2) The social showdown with Stazia (+ his bodyguards + his nephew/brother + the Bounty Hunter Casta - another PC's Rival - in an overwatch Sniper position due to a Devil's Bargain) to reach the agreement that would instigate the affair which would later implicate Stazia.
3) The Info Gathering Scenes for the Score at the Cabbie Garage (2 scenes and maybe 3 moves made).
4) The infiltration of the Cabbie Garage to successfully plant the bombs on the carriage and implicate Stazia as the culprit.
5) The Fortune Roll for the bombs to see if they successfully "did their thing" and/or if there were complications.
6) The forensic investigation by the Bluecoats and the attendant Deception Score where we discovered that the captain was corrupt and bought-off (in Stazia's pocket) and you had to resolve your planted evidence against Stazia and expose and counter the fait accompli nature of the corrupt Bluecoat investigation to ensure your own corruption won out!
None of that was scripted or prepped in any way (beyond the elements/rules that were already in play above). That is easily enough done in Story Now games if you (a) have a sufficiently capable ruleset that organizes and propels play (including the conversation of such play) toward emergent story and (b) have sufficient experience/capacity as GMs and players with such play and ruleset deployment.
The situation for PF2e just seems to be that PF is so dependent upon its AP implementation (which features fairly intensive, if not total, scripting of play) and its player-base enjoys that brand of play. So, while you certainly don't need 2 pages of scripted encounters to produce your Rival Stazia's downfall in our Blades in the Dark game, if that is supposed to be a lynchpin of a long metaplot? In that case, you're going to need a lot more prep to ensure the script.
I'm certain that if we ended up playing PF2e (and who knows...maybe at some point), that we could resolve emergent Story Now play via their VP noncombat conflict resolution system in the same way that I did with 4e's Skill Challenges. It just seems like that is both (i) well outside of PF's player base' interests and (ii) certainly would make a dent in their moneymaking (AP) model (if tables don't need their APs to generate compelling, emergent story...that sort of puts a dent in their $)!