[@_ck_ Participant 17 years, 2 months ago]

Well you’re asking two different things but the answer to both is yes with some code changes to your templates.

You can get the last poster for any topic in the list via this:

<?php echo '<a href="'.get_topic_last_post_link().'">'.get_topic_last_poster().'</a>'; ?>

but there is also a plugin that I believe will change the last poster’s name into a link too. So either way.

You might be able to paginate the lastest discussions by putting this at the bottom of latest discussions outside the loop:

<?php forum_pages(); ?>

However it’s a 50/50 chance it won’t work.

Or you can use the “My Views” plugin which will give you a paginated Latest Discussion view that you can link to.

example:

http://bbshowcase.org/forums/view/latest-discussions

plugin:

https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/my-views/