I consider board games to be amongst the best activities for engaging a group of people. They can be social, intellectual, creative, serious, and silly. A fun exercise is to try and come up with new games or variants of your favorite board games. To this end, I am in the habit of hosting board game parties on a regular basis. You can see some of my party invitations and ideas
here.
I particularly enjoy the exercise of generating new games by "hybridizing" two old games.
I have invented numerous hybrid games over the years. Of particular note are
Chutes and Ladders Carcassonne (it's non-euclidean!) and the
Hybrid SET Theorem. Here are some favorites:
Why not
host your own Hybrid Board Games Party?