Awesome, great response so far guys. We're at 13 players; I'll probably leave recruiting open for another day or two (with a hard cap of 16) and then look to start sometime in the middle of next week, as I believe Ragnarok-X is out this weekend, and I want everyone to have at least a few days to design/test pretenders.
Also thanks to shardphoenix for pointing me in the direction of calahan's ettinfix for cbm 1.92 -
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showpost.php?p=804194 - we'll be using that instead of standard cbm, so please download the fixed version and then use that when you design your pretender (unless you really want a pathless archmage).
for maps I'm currently looking at roaring rhinos/greece stain, or possibly riverlands if we get a few more players, but I'm open to suggestions.