How to Run a Games Night People Come Back To
The failure mode is almost never the game. It is the forty minutes before the game starts.
The problem is rarely the game
A games night dies for reasons that have nothing to do with what was on the table. It dies because four people sat through a twenty-five minute rules explanation, because the host picked something to impress rather than something to share, or because nobody decided anything and the evening dissolved into browsing a shelf.
Fix the process and mediocre games play well. Leave the process broken and excellent games fail in front of you.
Decide before anyone arrives
Choose the game yourself, in advance, and say what it is when you invite people. Democracy at the shelf is how you lose the first hour. Nobody wants to be the person who vetoes, so everyone defers, and deferral is not a decision.
If you want input, offer exactly two options and let the group pick between them. Two is a choice. Eleven is a browsing session with snacks.
Teach it wrong on purpose
The instinct is to explain every rule before the first turn so nobody is caught out. This is the single most reliable way to lose a table. People cannot hold twenty conditional rules in their head with no context to hang them on.
Teach the goal, teach the shape of a turn, and start. Handle exceptions when they come up. Yes, somebody will make a move they would not have made with full information. That is a much smaller cost than the four faces going blank during minute eighteen of a monologue.
Protect the ending
Endings are what people remember, and endings are what hosts most often ruin by letting a game run past the point where anyone is still enjoying it. If the outcome has been settled for three turns, say so and stop. Nobody has ever resented a games night for finishing while they still wanted more.
The corollary is to keep something short in reach. A twenty-minute game after the main event sends people home on a high rather than on a slow grind toward an inevitable result.
Feed people first
A table that is hungry will make bad decisions quickly in order to get to the food. This is not a metaphor. Eat before, or eat during something short, but do not schedule a two-hour game against an empty room at eight in the evening.