Do you know what edition of D&D you were playing? 4e was heavily focused around gridded combat and it turned many players off, as tactics and math overshadowed

Do you know what edition of D&D you were playing? 4e was heavily focused around gridded combat and it turned many players off, as tactics and math overshadowed the role playing. If you haven’t given 5e a try yet, do so - it’s substantially less crunchy that previous releases and frees combat from the tyranny of the grid if the group wishes to play it without. As far as balance between combat and story, that’s all up to content. Published adventures tend to be very heavy on dungeon crawls, while many homebrew adventures lean more towards RP.