Since I am a bit of a dinosaur, I have thus far only used brushed systems in my tanks and buggies. I am intrigued by those new lipo brushless systems but I am scared I will burn my house down. Can anybody point me in the right direction to get up to speed on those? Any good tutorials out there?

Wiki is a pretty decent place for a good read at least: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushl...electric_motor
Brushless can be run on NIMH btw, but most brushless motors are high current and meant for racing/power and your battery needs to be able to deliver that current. Brushless motors are great but sourcing them in our 28mm size with the correct KV rating is kinda expensive and difficult. It is however GREAT for torque if you get a sensored brushless motor though the cost is much higher for these plus they need a special brushless sensored ESC. I've found around 800-1200kv at 2 cell lipo is AROUND scale speed or at least enough to enjoy without feeling like a hot rod.
Most all aftermarket motherboards can run brushless even if they do not directly support it, just run a Y-Cable from the RX to your ESC and your MB and just dont connect the output of the motor on the MB and you will get both sound and motor control. I have found lately that you get much more precise control out of a good ESC than just changing over to brushless IMO. LMK if you got any more questions!

I'm not a tanker but I can tell you that like anything else if you are careless with something then it will come back to bite you. Lipo's are used in everything today and yet we are not burning down homes all over the place . As an model aviator they have revolutionized flying and using a proper charger and following safe procedures they are fine. Drop over to the electric flight forum or the car forums to look for information. They really don't handle any different than brushed motors but you don't want to run a lipo to low or you will kill it.