I have also had a lot of trouble with Skype video conferencing.
I have had good luck with Google+ hangouts for video conferencing but we usually only have 3 people total, so I don't know how well they scale. I THINK they can have up to 10 people in total but I am not sure about that. They do have an annoying bit where you have to click a button every hour to make sure you are still at your computer or they drop you from the call.
But I think Vent would be my server of choice. It takes a little work to get it set up but you can host a local Vent server that can have up to 8 simultaneous connections for free. Not good enough for MMO guilds and raids but sufficient for most tabletop style games.
Teamspeak would probably also work but I have never used it personally. I've always grabbed and set up Vent when I need something like that.
I'm interested in a game but I'll have to bow out of this one. I couldn't get home early enough on Tuesdays to make it work. The earliest I could be reliably available is 7PM Pacific Time which, if I haven't screwed up my time zone calculations completely yet again, wouldn't be until 9 PM central.
Huh. Never knew you could set up an 8 person vent server for free. I do like vent over any of the others. I guess I just assumed it couldn't be done. I'll look into that.
Teamspeak and Ventrillo for small groups (up to 8 since that's the limit for the free Ventrillo, I think) are roughly equivalent. Teamspeak, if I remember correctly, might be slightly easier to setup and configure, but neither are particularly difficult.