Well, for anyone who hasn't figured it out yet, there are a number of quests (at least 2 off the top of my head in Borean Tundra) where you have to gather something from a talkable NPC. If you use "/script SelectGossipOption(1)" on all your characters at the same time you can get an item for everyone before the npc gets flagged as "already gave out one, despawn".