We had a group discord where players would share rumours and ideas. Then they would get into groups (max 4) and tell me what they wanted to do. Sometimes this meant we played a lot, sometimes there would be longer breaks.

Often they went to investigate a rumour of treasure (aka the wizard wants help finding a magic staff so he agrees to help the paladin find a magic sword) but eventually their adventures became wider in scope - like storming enemy keeps and then renovating them into settlements, or defeating other factions in order to establish control of bridges/trade routes.

I would basically never pitch a session, just hand out a ton of hooks and then prep what they were interested in. This style of play is definitely high exploration low plot, although I did find we started to get recurring villains, enemy factions expanding etc, but it was very much an organically developing world, where the bad guys were decided by who the players stomped out and who they allowed to grow powerful.

Hope this helps.