tldr: I'm looking for an effective way to organize a weekly board game night with various levels of interest and experience. I'm struggling with communicating and including "everyone" when I need/want to.
Apologies for the long post, I'm trying to figure out what to do. Here's a little background: 4 years ago I moved into a new area, which included my modest collection of 200-300 games. There are not any regular MeetUp groups in my area for designer board games, just the usual ccg and tcg groups that meet at the local board game stores. So naturally, I've been inviting everyone I meet to join me for game nights on Fridays - new people who show an interest in the hobby, semi-experience people who have played a few games in college, and even the occasional person who has heard of these "new" games, such as Splendor and Pandemic: Legacy.
This has led me to create a list in my head of people to invite for game nights on Fridays. I usually text them during the week inviting them to game night, and often get varied results. One week I'll invite 10 people, and only 2 will come; the next week I'll invite 4 different people and all 4 will show up. Some people can handle longer, more complex(ish) games (like Scythe, Castles of Burgundy, Spirit Island, Slay the Spire: the Deckbuilding Game, etc.), but there are also a lot of people who are at a more entry level, so sometimes the mix-and-match can be... challenging. Perhaps I'll want to play Spirit Island, but I'll accidentally invite a new gamer, and we play entry level games all night. Perhaps I'll want to play Fantastic Factories, but I've got 5 people showing up and they want us all to play a game together. You get the idea.
So every week I play a game of "Who do I invite this week" and end up basically inviting whoever I want to and remember about this week. It's getting to the point where I often forget about people for a month or two, and then finally remember about them and eventually invite them back to a game night and will try to remember them going forward.
Here's where I need your help: what do I do? I'm considering two options at this point, but am open to suggestions! Option 1 - create a GroupMe with everyone who is interested in games. As I meet new people to invite, just add them to the group. Option 2 - create a Discord and try to keep track of everything through Discord.
I'm not very good with either platform, but I do have an account with both and am open to learning. My invitees include people who have an account with one platform but not the other on both ends, so some will have to create new accounts either way.
How do you organize your game nights and communicate to everyone? Do you invite everyone for every board game night? Do you have a monthly "everyone's invited!" get together, and then smaller, "by invite only" game nights? Do you set a game schedule before game night, or do you gather everyone and decide together what to play?
I'm thinking Discord might be a good way to have a "Heavier Games" channel/notification and then a "Lighter Games" channel/notification and people can join either or both of them. It also would allow me to do things like plan events (Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy Day!!), establish board game etiquette, and maybe track borrowed games. However, it also sounds pretty complex and I'm not sure how well it actually does those things.
More about my space - I have two tables, a gaming table that fits 6 and a regular dining room table that fits 8-10. I don't have a problem splitting into 2 groups, but I usually just go with whatever the group wants to do, which is sometimes a party game, sometimes a lighter game with a high-player count (CamelUp, Welcome To, etc), and occasionally we do split into 2 groups. My list of contacts is maybe 20 people, with about 7-8 that I would expect a "Yes" from at least once every other week and about 3 that I would expect a "Yes" from on a weekly basis. I don't mind inviting and hosting as many people who want to come, but there are also times where I just want to invite two or three people and play a longer game, but also don't want everyone else to feel left out. I also don't mind if they come and play something else - the goal is to include everyone
Thoughts, comments, help?