Quote Originally Posted by Hawksguard View Post
Of course, not all mountain ranges need necessarily be at active plate boundaries, even if you are striving for realism. As Hai-Etlik mentioned, you can have hot spots creating volcanic island chains in oceanic plates or supervolcano ranges in continental plates, such as Yellowstone. Some mountain ranges, such as the ancient Appalachians, were created by subduction of tectonic plates that have long disappeared into the mantle. (The modern Appalachians were created through uplift, much like the Rockies.)

So basically I'd keep playing around with your plates, labeling them with different directions, until you get the right combination of mountain-building action. When creating my world I started with the plate boundaries, continental shields and direction of drift and then sketched out the resulting land masses. But there is no reason why you can't do the same thing in reverse.
Thanks in advance for your help. I get what your saying, but I just need to clarify a few terms:

What are plate boundaries (I am assuming the edges of the plates, but I want to be certain)?
What are continental shields?
Direction of drift seems to be self explanatory and would tell me what type of activity I would have where the plates met.

As I posted above to Hai-Etlik. I am moving towards breaking down the plates into smaller ones. This would allow for some of the vulcanism in the southern oceans that inevitably needs to take place and still allow for some actvity with mainland. I will work on it tomorrow and repost. As I posted I have to go back to work. Time for some Z's.