You play a young William Gibson type of novelist, writing fictional stories about a cyberpunk world. The world you create is one rife with criminality.

In the opening cinematic, you agree to be a test subject in a research project being carried out at a local university. The research focuses on boosting the creativity of people who are already quite artistic.

You receive a drug…and your creativity soars.

Gameplay begins.

Some of the crimes from your cyberpunk novels actually start coming true in your city. This is strange, because those crimes involve weapons that don't even exist yet.

It couldn't be that someone read your books and is committing crimes based on what you describe, not only because the weapons don't exist yet, but because these crimes are based on a book you're currently writing—one that no one has seen yet.

Are you telepathically causing these crimes?

No. The world in your mind, already quite vivid, actually became “real” as a result of that drug, which unleashed in you powers long dormant in our race: the ability to turn thought into reality. The drug didn't have this effect on anyone else, just you, because of your constitution and level of imagination.

So criminals from the world of your novel have been entering the real world and creating mayhem. You feel responsible for these crimes, and take it upon yourself to try and stop them. However, you're up against truly evil men from that alternative world, who wield superior weaponry.

Still, in gameplay, you fight and kill a number of these vicious visitors from the world of your novel. When you learn you've only been killing henchmen, however, you need to enter the novel world itself.

Once there, you'll find your face, body, and clothing transformed slightly, so you look like the cyberpunk character you created in your fiction (as seen in the painting).

In this world, you'll meet and hook up with Maya, that woman on the stairs. She's neither completely good nor evil. She loves you, but she also runs errands for the top Boss. Maya passes on vital information to you to about the Boss, but also passes on information about you to him as well. She's just trying to survive.

You and the Boss both know Maya's playing both sides but don't mind, because both of you benefit in some ways. She starts getting slowly torn apart emotionally, though, for she's falling in love with you. But she's afraid that if she does, the top Boss will kill her. Her fear is not unfounded.

And what if she puts her faith in you and you abandon her—or are unable to take her back to your world, even if you want to? She'd be dead meat in this world.

You'll finally need to fight your way up to the top Boss. In the end, you'll find that the very top Boss had actually funded the research lab where you received the drug in the real world.

So the game ends with a conundrum:

Which one is the truth? The game ends with this question still hanging.

This game scenario employs a number of Emotioneering techniques.

Maya will have an interesting Character Diamond. She is:

She also has an innocent, vulnerable side that she won't show to you until you have proven yourself trustworthy. This is the side she hides behind her street-smart, survivor persona.

You'll come to see Maya's toughness as a Mask. Masks give an NPC depth.

You'll bond with Maya because of Player Toward NPC Chemistry Techniques:

When you protect her from harm (discussed in the section “First-Person Character Deepening”), your Chemistry with her will also increase, for taking responsibility for an NPC has that effect.

In your relationship with Maya, you'll have several feelings toward her simultaneously:

Layered feelings add depth to a relationship.

Your body is different in this world—you've got more stamina, strength, and prowess. Thus you'll be more drawn into your character.

You will grow in your feeling of responsibility for the real world, for the cyberpunk world, and for Maya. To enhance a feeling of responsibility for the cyberpunk world, we'll introduce other characters there, in addition to Maya, whom you'll like and to whom you'll feel indebted for their help.

A sense of growing responsibility can also be enhanced in other ways. For instance, the more sub-bosses you take out in the cyberpunk world, the more the people of that world start treating you as a hero. This positive reinforcement will make you more willing to take responsibility.

Will you encourage Maya to rely on you? By helping you, she's already at risk, and the more attached to you she gets (and the more helpful), the more danger she puts herself in. The Boss will want revenge.

If we use enough Player toward NPC Chemistry Techniques, you'll want to look out for her. You'll need to defend her when the Boss, or one of his henchmen, comes gunning to get her.

Taking responsibility for another causes First-Person Character Deepening.

You'll need to decide how much you allow her to fall in love with you, once you learn you won't be able to take her back with you to your realm. We'd set it up in the game that there are small things you can do for her that make her more smitten by you—but the more she's taken by you, the greater her heartbreak will be when you leave.

It might be nice to enjoy her affections, but will you be willing to increase her suffering later on? Wrestling with this decision is another First-Person Deepening experience.

Responsibility will keep you motivated to move forward, as you try to stop the crimes happening in the real world, and then go to their source in the next world. The need to protect Maya also provides motivation.^[1]

Solving the mystery as to the relationship between the two worlds will also keep you motivated.

The ending is a little open-ended, meaning we're left to speculate as to what really happened. Did the Boss of the cyberpunk world set the chain of events in motion, or did your imagination bring the cyberpunk world to life and thus set the ball rolling? As we saw in Chapter 2.17, leaving a little mystery at the end of a story is a Plot Deepening Technique. (It's certainly not appropriate for every story, but works well with this one.)

This chapter ends the discussion of Emotioneering techniques. But this book exists in a balanced energy state. Therefore, when you lose something, like Emotioneering, you get something in return, like the next chapter, “Magic.”

Among other things, it tells you why I wrote this book.