Get some new friends? Seriously! Widen your circle of friends a bit. I did this myself and ended up in a fantastic game of BD&D - something I have wanted to play for the last 5 years. All because I asked around with friends of friends and friends i don't get to see very often.
As for getting people to try new things - I have no real advice there. People get pretty entrenched in their ruts and getting them out is often impossible.
These answers are rather disheartening...how do you make friends again?
First you need a big castle and access to both dead bodies and lots of electricity....
It *is* hard to meet new people - but hardly impossible. That's why I used friends of friends to get into my BD&D group.
And Matt Filla is right - getting gamers to try anything new is extremely hard once they are in their rut. The few times I have done it I haven't really gave them a choice - I present the game I'll be running if they like it they're in if they don't...I do have a waiting list of players ready to step up. It does help to live in a player rich environment and have a reputation (almost deserved!) of running fun games.
There was a time when I was really reluctant to play anything other than 3.5. Then I made the switch to PF, and then tried a classmate's new system, and now I'm eager to try any kind of new game.
Once you get the floodgates open, it's much easier. Maybe convince them to play just a one-shot with a new system.
Gurps, BESM, AMBER, Champions, Rolemaster (of coarse) are all systems that can fake D&D or Fantasy games but most do other things.
GURPS does lots of things, so does BESM. AMBER can easily take place in a fantasy world just as easily as it can take place in a future one. Champions is Super heroes, but there is also Fantasy Heroes. Rolemaster (or chartmaster if you will) is probably the ultimate at difficult, but the game I played was very fun.
The point is, many games can be toyed with to be made into a fantasy game. If you can get the group comfortable with the system, you can try to get them to play something different.
For example, Amber. You start it off as a fantasy world and the short game(if they like it) and tell them that this world is all a lie...IT'S A SHADOW! Then you go from there.
Is there any way to get friends interested in new systems at all, or to at least get them to consider trying it out? So far all the advice I've heard on the subject is, "it's impossible."
Because that 'advice' is generally accurate. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink and all that.
People have limited time and make decisions that best suit their needs - in this case, learning a brand new game and then playing it is way down their list of priorities. And that's the way things go in life.
With that said, if you even want a remote chance of success - especially given the responses you have received so far - the minimum amount of work you'll have to do is do ALL the legwork for them beforehand. That is, you'll have to create miniature "player's handbooks" for each one of them that defines character creation and the rules they need to know, with just enough information that they can play but not too much to make it onerous to learn; put together a coherent campaign guide that will spark their interest; distribute both of them in a reasonable amount of time beforehand (not too early in that they'll forget everything and not too late in that they won't have a chance to review what they'll need to review); and then talk-talk-talk about the game and setting in a very enthusiastic manner over a period of time. When appropriate. But not too much.
Does that sound like an extraordinary amount of work? Yes... yes it does. But if you want uninterested people to become interested, you have a massive uphill battle before you. (And yes, the above is the MINIMUM amount of work. You do anything less than that, and it's pretty much guaranteed failure.)
Good luck with that.
Or, they found the game that they like and given the amount of time available for gaming, they'd rather spend it playing the game they like than learning a new one that they may or may not like. Nothing wrong with trying new things, but sometimes it's just a rational decision to use a limited resource (gaming time) in a certain way.
That is my position. I'm 46, and most of the group is of similar age. We play HERO in group, and the wife and I play Pathfinder solo. We would rather spend out time playing than worrying about rules. Both of these rulesets (as complex as they can be) I've play long enough that I rarely have to reference much. Hero almost never, and details on spells or grappling for PF.
It just isn't worth my limited game time to try a new game. Hero is universal, and we have played many genres with it. PF is my favaorite iteration of one of my favorite games. Enjoyment for me comes from character immersion and I can do that much better with a game system that I know inside and out. New systems actually interfere with the reason I play RPGs.
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You should look for or start a meetup. Find new gamers in the community and talk shop. Another way to look at it is ask yourself if you would want to play Little house on the prairie or Buck Rogers RPG? Some games just attract a niche group. I know you think gaming with your best friends is ideal and you dont want game without them but seriously if they are not invested it wont be fun.