Scenario packets

  ]indexsupertask!primary As with the other primary supertasks, the behavior of this supertask can be altered by scenario packets. One aspect which these explain are different styles of agent interaction. This includes various combinations of ``social states'' in communication; for example, the type of interactions one would expect to see between two close male friends would be very different from the type of interaction exhibited between a boss and an employee in a formal business setting. Several of these social relations can be seen in Lycanthrope: Ed and Norm are friends, for example, so there is a set of activities one may expect to occur between them. Augmenting the social and interaction packets are packets of how agents react in various emotional settings (e.g., if a person receives poor service in a clothing store he regularly visits). Finally, ``local'' scenario packets exist which describe the more-or-less default results from an action in a standard setting. At the lowest level, these packets are simply the expected results for a given action and the expected preconditions which may have triggered the action; as such, they allow low-level inferencing to be performed. At their highest level, the local scenario packets resemble     scripts, plans, and MOPs     ([#!scripts:schank-abelson-1977!#,#!memory:schank-1982!#]); they package together a set of expected preconditions and results which exist in various stereotypical events and in achieving certain familiar goals. The packets are more flexible in nature than either scripts or plans; however, my research did not need the full capabilities of MOPs, so ISAAC's packets are more rigid than those entities.