Yup.
Having played an "
Orbinated" setup for a couple months now, I definitely prefer open-handed to cross-handed playing. It does take some doing, since you can't really do the traditional RH-hats, LH-snare, LF-hats, RF-kick anymore if your hats are low (you have to either invert your feet or your hands from that traditional setup), but it really is a good motivator for practice and I find it much easier to write parts, especially
interesting parts, with the way the setup flows. I also love having two independent hi-hats to complement pitches/chord progressions in the music.
As for rudiments/rolls.... start slow, practice a while, increase click by 2-5 beats, repeat. The way I got comfortable with reversed playing was just playing through music I know for a while and working out everything that I could do on a traditional set. I started off with a lot of Coheed and I've been jamming a lot of Mars Volta lately which will really beef up your left hand lead if you keep at it