How difficult is the transition to multi-cellular life?

[stevebowers]

I have a vague memory of an EG article somewhere saying there are something like 256 garden worlds in the Terragen Bubble - but not sure if that article or statement still exists in the EG. Also not sure how that would or would not fit into the above guideline.


Todd

256 garden worlds and 50 xenosophont species means that one in five garden worlds develops a civilisation, which seems a bit too high. However most of the xenosophonts we have described have not emerged on Earth-like worlds.

...we have never really said much about the number or frequency of non-terrestrial ecologies in the setting (e.g., gas giant ecosystems, Muuhome type ecosystems, T'oul'h type ecosystems, chlorine based ecosystems etc. We have mentions of specific worlds of these types (usually the homeworld of a xenosophont race) but don't provide any numbers on how common they are or whether or not they are included in the total number of garden worlds in the setting. We currently imply that the 'garden world' term applies only to Earth-like biospheres, which seems rather parochial really and might do with an update.

If we stick with the figure of 256 Earth-like garden worlds, but introduce my suggestion in post #14 that would mean ~2500 worlds with macroscopic life in total, that is to say 10 times as many (but only 1 in 10 are Earth-like). However the figure of 256 was established in the early years of the scenario, before we expanded the territory somewhat; it could easily be twice that now.

Eh, isn't Tohul Prime called "tohulian type garden world"?

Excellent point. We can classify the other worlds with macroscopic life by using their biosphere type as a descriptive marker (Tohulian, Halogenic, Jovian, Europan, Softoneian, Muuhian, Vitriolic, Neutronian and so on).