Check out the newest addition to 2400, Junior Hybrid Battle Cryptids — a game about anthropomorphic animals protecting the innocent, investigating strangeness, and crushing it at dance-offs. 

This one has been a long time coming. You can read the whole origin story (and more) in the Junior Hybrid Battle Cryptids devlog on the Pretendo Games blog. Here, I'll just highlight some suggestions for integrating it with other 2400 games.

Expand your upgrade options. Want some more advancement options for your Cryptids game? Boy howdy, have I got you covered. When you complete a mission, instead of increasing an approach, choose one of the following instead:

• Unlock a dormant cyber-implant (if you’re a cyborg) from Inner System Blues or Resistors
• Develop new biological adaptations (thanks to advanced stages of mutation or your alien life cycle) from Xenolith, Xot, Zone, or Exiles
• Learn new mystical techniques (if you’re a mystic) from Legendsmagic spells or Project Ikaros psychic powers

If you’re feeling daring, you might even mix some of those options into character creation, too. If you don’t have a team of turtles or mole rats shrugging off pain, you might appreciate starting the game with some chrome blood cells (via Resistors).

Expand your mission options. Most missions in 2400 games are more short-term “jobs” or “gigs,” but there are some big problems to tackle on the back page of some of those. If you run through all the mission suggestions in Cryptids and are blanking on new ones, check out “Problems that may actually demand attention” in Habs & Gardens, “Pro-bono jobs” in Resistors, and “missions” in Eos for some bigger-picture quests.

There’s also plenty material in Cryptids you can port into other 2400 games. Consider…

Use the simpler rules for younger players. If you want to run 2400 for kids, taking out some of the more nitty-gritty resource management rules (like defenses, credits, and hindrances from heavy items) is a fine way to do it. Simplifying healing to “go rest awhile,” but things might get trickier in the meantime” is a lot easier than trying to explain healthcare.

Use chips/lessons with players who like “inspiration” or “bennies.”Consider what might be an appropriate trigger for other games. In an Eosor Xenolith series inspired by the Mass Effect video games, for instance, you might rethink these as “paragon points” (earned when you accept a cost to do the right thing) and “renegade points” (earned when you cause collateral damage to get the job done). 

Mine it for new species, origins, and backgrounds. In Xenolith, any of the “cryptid” types here would make a fine species. In Exiles or Tempus Diducit, combine a “cryptid” with a couple items and skills, and you’ve got a background. In Cosmic Highway, you might be a spacer, a human downsider, or an alien that looks like a talking polecat. In ALT, your new body might be an uplifted mole rat. 

Use styles/approaches instead of skills. If you like the sound of a short skill list, but the skillsets in other 2400 games don’t really work for your purposes, styles (or your own favorite Fate Accelerated approaches) are a nice alternative that tells you a little more about the characters. 

Cryptids. In. SPAAAAAACE. Dropping a cryptid superhero into some other game sounds like a bad idea, doesn’t it? But hey, your favorite mutant turtles have been sent to fight dinosaur-men in an interstellar gladiatorial arena (run it with Battle Moon!), have been pursued by nefarious authorities (Project Ikaros!), and have been known to take on odd jobs and side hustles for pizza money (Inner System Blues! Cosmic Highway! Resistors!).

Just a heads-up, though: Dropping characters made in this game onto a team that also has characters built in another 2400 game might be a little tricky. 

Cryptids characters are heavy on special abilities to account for not having much equipment, not having an explicitly spelled-out way to gain new special abilities, and having to live in secret. Put them into Orbital Decay or Cosmic Highway with everything they get here, and you run the risk of some players feeling like they get to play superheroes, and others playing their normie buddies. Drop them into Resistors with teammates whose glitchy cyberware puts them at risk of heart attack, and you might feel a bit of a tonal mismatch. 

That doesn’t mean you can’t put those characters together, of course. Some players would love to play the normie buddies! And fighting the corps in a cyberpunk near-future is absolutely battle worthy of the game’s name — and, I’d argue, would fit right into those early TMNT comics. (“Hacker” was even one of the battle-training options I considered and cut from this version, but it could certainly go back in.) 

Still, the tidiest way to put these characters into other 2400 games is to “mine it for new species and backgrounds,” as described above. In other words, rather than make a character using Cryptids, make a character for that other game, and swap out components with stuff from Cryptids. If playing a game with “origins” or “species,” take one package of stuff from Cryptids for it, like the bundle of animal features. If you also want to give them the stuff from being a cyborg or having been trained as a mystic, it should replace something else, like starting with credits and items.

All of that said, the setting in Cryptids can be slotted into a broader 2400 setting without too much trouble. “The city” could be on modern-day Earth, but it could just as easily be a lo-fi sci-fi world where humanoid animals aren’t commonplace. Even in settings like Eos and Xenolith, with established galactiv communities, being a member of a previously unknown species, or living on a much less diverse planet, might still cause a stir. 

Remember: In 2400, the games are all part of the same setting. (Unless they aren’t.)