Here’s a slightly loopy suggestion that I’m making just in case it has any practical value. Since playing together in the same room is a physical impossibility because of the distance, and since playing by forum has problems from an interactivity/tutorial viewpoint…would it be possible to split the diffrence by having the players who live close to each other play physically in the same room and having the remote players play along on their own duplicate map board, with a Skype video-conferencing link being used to connect everyone? As long as the various locations make sure that they replicate accurately on their local map the moves and actions being made at the other locations, it shouldn’t be too hard to keep everyone properly synchronized. And any questions that come up duirng play could be answered in real time. The time zone difference, in a worse-case scenario (i.e. the other side of the planet), can’t be more than twelve hours, so in principle playing on a weekend should make it possible to pick a time that’s, let’s say, in the morning for one group and in the evening for the other group, with the morning group being free for the day and the evening group being able to sleep in the next morning.