SAMHUNNY'S PROFILE

There's some stuff I want to do in RPG Maker XP, but I don't know how to do it.

My game will include 6 party members. I kind of wanted them to be inter-changeable, kind of like the Tales of series or some FF games. The way it is now, I don't think it can have a roster of more than 4 characters in the party screen, let alone have you adjust their order.
I'm not good at scripting, and I'm not sure yet how different combat is going it be in the end, but the 6 party members is something I can't get around.

Some other minor things are have hot keys that open certain menus. Instead of going to Esc, I'd want WASD and maybe Q&E linked to inventory, equipment, spells, ect, and when I start the game, I can't seem to get around the character being visible for a split second. The game is supposed to start in a room and fade from black, but it starts in the room, then turns black, then fades from it.

I got the RPGMaker XP trial downloaded 4 days ago and I'm hooked. I love it, and I'm already knee-deep in a project. I've been watching tutorials, playing with the program, getting a good feel for everything. I pretty much know how to do everything at face value; it's the quirks of the program I don't understand.

The first two days I started playing around, I made a really quick game called "My First Adventure". It started up fine, everything worked properly, and after I finished my "quest", I successfully initiated a transport (Entering a tent), and a brief cut scene. The NPCs went to bed and I was free to explore the room. I did have a couple hiccups I want some advice on:
When I saved my game and continued, the events that moved or disappeared had reset themselves. I assumed this was because I told the events to delete themselves rather than whatever it was I was supposed to do. I also thought it had something to do with switches because it was very consecutive branch heavy because I thought the switches were really fun.

I dropped My First Adventure on my third day with RPGMaker and I started to make a real RPG. I've actually planning on making a game, so these questions have more urgency.
First off, I got ahead of myself and started with a cut scene I'm not using until later in the intro. The scene is a king talking to his daughter about the dangers of leaving the castle, but she wants to go outside anyway. She eventually runs off to the balcony, and I was having him walk off as the screen faded to black, but for some reason, he'd eventually turn around and start walking left. I double checked the commands I gave him, did a couple of tests, and he kept going left. Sometimes he would rush into the room even though I didn't turn up his speed. Sometimes the princess re-appeared out of the room (where she ran off to). I wasn't using switches; all the commands were on one event controlling the other.
I have NO idea what I did, but I woke up this morning and it worked. The scene works like a dream and I love it.
When I got to the scene following that one, it went down hill. After figuring out how to set up a panoramic background and building the balcony, I compiled a scene where the princess is mulling about when a lower class friend of hers shows up out of the blue. In this scene, I tried using activation switches, self switches, giving the commands to another event, but no matter what I did, the princess always froze when it came to moving. I checked over and over to see if these tiles were walkable, and they are. I looked up to see if anyone else had this problem, and someone said they solved it by turning "Through" on. So I turned on "Through".
OMG, I created life (again)! After the scene ends, I have it set so it'll teleport me to a different map I made of the city so that I could check to see if all the events work right. BUT now my hero won't move. Dx
So I turned Through on after confirming those tiles can be walked on. I don't mind using Through for cutscenes, but I can't have the player going through walls.
Please help me...

Also, since I am a beginner, any tips, tricks, or important notes would be greatly appreciated.