Is there a way to change how stories appear when the topics are selected? For example, I don't want the text showing up, only the title and poster/date/time -- with a link to go to a page with only that story. I didn't see where I could change that in the skins. Is it possible to do this?

try modifying the preview skin for stories. this skin is used to display a story on a frontpage and the topics page. i made a little experiment on milzbr.antville.org and it works. try it! this site doesn't serve for any other purpose than this.

here is my skin. feel free to modify it. <p><span class="storyDate"><% this.author as="link" %>, <% this.createtime format="long" suffix="<br>"%></span> <span class="storyTitle"><% this.title suffix="<br>" %></span> <span class="small"><% this.link text="more..." %> <% this.commentcounter prefix="(" suffix=")  " anchor="#comments" %><% this.link to="comment" text="place your comment!" %>  <% this.editlink prefix="... " %></span><br> </p>