I sympathize, I really do. My friends includes a nucleus that got to know each other through D&D back in grade school, waaaaaay too long ago. We are still friends, but we haven't managed to get any role playing happening in years, despite a number of us still having an interest in it. Partly it is a time constraint, partially it is that we have such different interests.
I'd suggest that the group that you describe during this discussion are mostly gamists, in that gamist/narrativist/similationalist breakdown. They like to compete with the "world" and conquer it. Anything that interferes with the pleasure of shooting all the aliens ships and advancing to the next screen with a bigger gun, errr, I mean defeating the opponents, getting the loot, and being rewarded with more power is just an annoying distraction. One of my friends and the other person most eager to get a game going is of this type, and I've given up trying to run games for him because I keep failing to keep both of us interested for long. We play CCGs when we need a nerd fix now.
Having said all that....it isn't impossible. There was one guy (long moved across the ocean) who used to keep everyone interested with fascinating and difficult situations with interesting enough back stories and great atmosphere. Typical would be the characters were in prison in a city that was just giving in to a siege by unholy forces, and we'd start out all but naked trying to gather resources and figure out what the heck was going on, and in the process of trying to survive we'd realize that we'd somehow have to take out the commanders of the attackers. Each knife/sword/shielf scavenged was a valuable treasure, there were 'impossible' situations to work our way out of, a puzzle that had to be solved, etc, and a whole story of what was going on to be worked out. Mind you, he ran mostly one offs and mini-series, rather than months long campaigns. The amount of combat he included to satisfy the other players occasionally grated on me, but for the most part I enjoyed those games.
--Bryan
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