One of the not very well documented features is Templates.  Active Forums gives you ability to define custom layout templates per forum.  The first template is the ForumView Template which is your primary display for accessing your forums.  Right now this is still pretty rigid as far as layout goes, but we that will be changing in Active Forums 3.8.  The other templates are for your Topics and Topic View.  Topics View is the listing of all your topics.  Topic View is the actual listing of each reply in a topic. 

I just started working on a template that you can use for blog style layout, which is quite easy in Active Forums 3.7.  I will post a how to and the template once I get it finished.  I have it working now, but it's not really that attractive.