Welcome, Godon!
Btw, Liquid Story Binder's trial ends after thirty non-consecutive days of use, not thirty consecutive days of non-use. Word matters order :-). It does look cool though - helping to keep reference images tied to related content one is writing, for instance.
World-building thoughts - indeed, consider inviting others to your creative sandbox. Infusions of other peoples' imagination could keep the wild variety you're looking for fresh. Tidbits and starters might be enough - instigators instead of collaborators.
Connecting with conlang folks could net you some families of tongues that hang together.
I agree about maps generating all manner of story lines and detail possibilities. The bit of geofiction writing I do springs oftenest from something on a map.
To get plausible climate zones out of Fractal Terrains, you'll want to do some educated guessing and tweaking. See things like http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/docs/rs...Sect14_1c.html -- on the fifth graphic up from the bottom, see how (very!) generalized seasonal pressure patterns place highs over big continental masses during a hemisphere's winter, and over oceans during a hemisphere's summer? The pic above that pair shows how some generalized winds spiral into and out of these lows and highs, differing by whether in northern or southern hemisphere.
At this point if your eyes are glazing it's ok to just say "uhhh, the prevailing winds across continent X are about like SO" and be done with it :-).
But if you're compulsive enough to want plausibility, there's a good general presentation at http://geog-www.sbs.ohio-state.edu/c...0Lecture24.ppt . From slide 33 on, it shows how those summer/winter patterns drive wet seasons vs. dry ones. Once you get an idea of where the overall wind patterns might be, you can then guess how that would drive surface ocean currents (did I mention I tend to obsess over this kind of stuff? :-) ). The 'slant' of coasts will matter a lot, as will whether straits are big enough to pass large amounts of water, vs. small enough to choke off flow. Here's how I did that on a Fractal Terrains world. Busy, busy, map - sorry.
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