Have you considered...mafia?
I have tried it! Vengeful 5P! But every time they'll say "What do you mean find someone to lynch? How do we know!?" And then I try and explain about interactions and why certain things matter more than others, but they just tune out. They do, however, like RMM-ish games with fun night actions, but we have a hard time getting enough players for that.
I have done research on all games you guys mentioned up until ashersky's post. Here's my thoughts:
Forbidden Island/Hey that's my Fish: Both look fun (FI, however,
much more than HTMF) but I saw that they are on iOS, so I think I'd rather do that. I imagine it'll be easier for HTMY with setup, but it seems like some of the fun in Forbidden Island is watching the island sink right in front of your face. Alpha gaming could be a problem, and maybe essentially having the 'board to yourself' when playing will help remove that.
Citadels: Looks fun to me, but I don't think my family would enjoy it that much. I may be overcomplicating the whole role selection thing though. I may have to try this by PBF to get a feel for it.
Incan Gold: Alright, story time.
So I saw this and thought 'hey, this'll probably work with a deck of cards," I looked up a simple card list (giving me the 15 Hazards and 15 Treasures that make up the deck) and modified a 52 deck to do this. Made face values, aces and 2s to represent the Hazards, and then the other cards to represent the Treausure. I divided them up to have 1 '10' and 1 '3' and then some random other cards to give the deck some balance. It looked good to me, so I tried it out. Using a Stop/Go light from a kid's game to represent playing/quitting.
I tried it out a bunch 2 player...and they loved it! I thought it was OK 2player, but it ended up being much more nerveracking than I thought.
I got 1 game of 3 player in and it was a blast. The cards split more unevenly, leaving more in the middle and a greater incentive to leave.
I really like this game, but I don't know if it's enough to buy it. The missing variety of Treasure Cards, less incentive to leave, and bad components turned me off, but that's pretty silly to think knowing that the real game fixes that with a wide range of different treasures ( apparently from as low as 1 to as high as 17), artifacts, and some decent-ish components. The game just seems a bit overpriced for what you get. I think I'm going to have to play it with more people before I'm sold on the idea, but I'll most likely get it eventually.
Escape: Looks really cool and reminds me a LOT of that real-time game I told you I was working on (albeit this seems much cooler. How could I have missed using self-limiting dice. D'oh!). Pretty spendy, but it seems like the awesome game that I imagined the game I was making would end up like.
Dixit: This seems fun, but it seems like the type of game my sister would love, so I'll probably end up buying it later as a gift for her birthday. That way I'll occasionally be able to play, which is just fine for me.
So for now I have my eye on Escape or Incan Gold. But I haven't looked at the other games everyone's suggested, so I'll have to check those out before making the final verdict. Thanks!