One concern I've seen with the GM mode from the various streams is that the combat is based around D:OS 2 gameplay. However, D:OS 2 gameplay is based around exploration, the freedom to wander back and forth, pursuing different quests as desired, and returning to town to get new equipment upgrades and buy new skills.
The GM mode has a bunch of small maps which players are locked into. Few of the maps have any vendors at all, much less skill vendors.
It also doesn't help that only combat XP is granted automatically, and the GM is required to manually give XP for any other method of problem solving. Even in the streams, this almost NEVER happened. Players tended to be stuck at level 1 with the same starting skills for the whole mini-campaigns. The designs for a tabletop D&D and D:OS 2 clash quite a bit.
There is absolutely nothing blocking the GM for doing so.
We created small maps because after a lot of playtest we found that DMing a group of people going nuts around a really big map was hard to handle as the GM.
GM can create bigger maps without any problem if he/she desire.
GM can create any kind of vendor selling any kind of skills.
For the XP, right now, yes, it has to be done manually. I guess that the streamers didn't felt like giving XP outside combat.
PS: Thanks everyone for the suggestions/feedback. We are reading everything
