Huh? What? Yes you can. I invite friends over for beer, pizza, and video games all the time...
Also, LAN parties :).
Depends on your boardgames. Some can be rather vicious, and since people usually take longer to think about their actions, backstabbing and then turning the dagger, is even more fun and meaningful. (But I guess, I like the American dinosaur of a game, Diplomacy, way too much.)
If you're a fan, then I'm actually running a series of games at the moment on the DPPD judge (http://www.floc.net/dpjudge/) - if you look at http://www.diplom.org/openings/openings.html#USDP for openings on the judge they're the vole_xxx games.
I agree, and I was pretty involved with the pbem hobby for a few years now. At the moment, I just moved to Singapore and am still settling in. I've mostly played the 1900 variant recently, and even introduced the Cambridge University Diplomacy Society to that variant and made it their mainstay.
1900 is a definite improvement over standard.
I prefer pbem over ftf, but ftf is a good pastime in its own right.