[LetsRock]

Tourney's are a two edged sword: They're a lot of fun, but it ususally winds up that several players are knocked out fairly early with nothing to do until the tourney ends. If there's plans for another game or tourney after the first one, you risk losing players who don't want to hang around. And the ones that do can be a distraction to those still playing.

I'd advise to have regular tourneys, but play mainly ring games. Make the tourneys special events and it's known that if you bust out early, you can go home or hang around if you like. But ring games keep everyone around as long as they want so it's best to have ring games for most of your poker nights.

Low limit NL can be fun. I play in a game where we overvalue the chips (much like a tourney) but you can cash out anytime you like. $30 buys you $1,000 worth of chips (each game dollar = .03 cash when it comes time to cash out)
It allows you to feel like you're gambling big, but it really doesn't hurt you if you get creamed. This can work for any buy in amount and it's easy to change limits. Our game has buyins from $25-60 but you get the same number of chips each time. But it could be done for as little as $10 and still be able to cash out easily.

It'll feel a bit odd at first, but once the players get used to it, it works fine.

If you're going to do a tourney before the ring game kind of thing, it's best to have a very fast moving tourney (very aggressive blind increase) so that those who do bust early won't have to wait for hours.