However, I can't get my group to play it. They say that the actual process of rolling the dice is fun. I tend to agree.
What I'do you laid all the cards out face down on the table, rolled the dice, and chose whichever card was closest?
It seems like if you have a good memory, you could be a lot more strategic with the robber when doing this (assuming you mean a deck of 36 cards, you know that a recently drawn "roll" won't come up until the next reshuffle).
Indeed! You may reasonably regard this to be a bug or a feature.