Let things breathe

Allow stretches of time to pass between adventures, or even between individual moves. It's a big world out there, and the PCs have mundane, daily tasks to attend to. Avoid the temptation to follow the PCs lives from day to day, hour to hour. Have weeks or months go by with a single statement: "The next three weeks keep you all occupied with the harvest, and then..."

When a threat looms, it need not be immediate and dire. You can show signs of it stirring but keep it distant and remote. Ask the PCs what they do about it, but you can resolve their response over days or weeks. Zoom in and frame a scene only when the fiction calls for immediate, specific action; zoom back out as soon as that's over. Let the threat simmer until it boils over and becomes something the PCs have to deal with.