bbPress.org

I am hoping to create a very basic single forum forum. My goal is to set it up so

http://www.mydomain.com/discussions

is a paginated list of the different topics. I know because of WordPress’s fear that when using custom post types someone might create a post named “page” that would interfere with the paginated pages, so we have to add an additional slug, so I wouldn’t mind setting up

http://www.mydomain.com/discussions/topic/the-topic-title

But, a URL this simple isn’t possible out of the box. Is there a possible way of doing this without having to “hack the core.”

I was also curious if it is possible for tags to show up in searches, or to create a list or drop down menu or if nothing else one of those “clouds.” I don’t see what point they serve now other than just appearing next to topics once you have already found it.