PastMaster: Reshaping History

Sherwood Forest, 1152. Comedian Heidi Regan has arrived to meet her hero, and she doesn't mean the Kevin Costner version. Robin Hood, the Merry Men, and a mission to steal the Sheriff of Nottingham's treasure and break some outlaws out of jail. Claude 3.5 runs the Game Master for this one, allegedly the "chattiest, slickest chatbot in the game." Asked whether she pictures Robin Hood as a man or a...

Kyoto, 1336. Feudal Japan at its most volatile. Samurai clans vying for power, the emperor's authority in flux, and the AI Game Master narrating the whole thing in a cockney accent. Ryan inserted one simple line into the prompt: "GameMaster must stay in character at all times. The character you must personify is a cockney gangsta with a penchant for the dramatic." The results were dramatic. Claude...

Rachel, Nevada, 1988. The nearest town to the most secretive military installation on Earth, and comedian Sunil Patel is here to ask the question PastMaster was arguably built for: does the AI Game Master, with access to the entire internet's worth of training data, actually believe in aliens? The logic is sound. If any entity has parsed every conspiracy theory, government report, eyewitness accou...

Medellin, 1973. Pablo Escobar is building the most powerful drug cartel in history, and Keon has arrived with possibly the most ambitious opening gambit in PastMaster history: become Escobar's right-hand man with a 50/50 split of all the takings. Just walk up and ask. Based on the documentaries he's watched, he reckons this is achievable. The documentaries, notably, all end badly. Keon's plan to p...

Oxford, 1350. Medieval England is deep in the age of superstition, the university is the closest thing to a centre of learning, and Nick Horseman has just been dropped into it with a brand new AI Game Master that might be clinically insane. ChatGPT has been benched. Claude AI has entered the chat. Same starting prompt, radically different energy. Nick takes on the role of an aristocratic occultist...

Rural Derbyshire, 1813. The Regency social season is in full swing, and Alice Nagle and Kimberly Marsh from Fetch the Smelling Salts podcast have arrived as the pushiest aunts in English literature. Their mission: secure advantageous marriages for their nieces in a world where one wrong curtsy could destroy a family's reputation forever. Alice and Kim take on the roles of rival matriarchs navigati...

Rome, 150 BCE. The Roman Republic is at its swaggering peak, senators are running the show, and comedian Sunil Patel has arrived with a plan to make a name for himself among the elite. His previous PastMaster appearance gave us the legendary "Patel's Box" — a game-changing invention so enigmatic it became a running joke. Now he's back, and Rome isn't ready. Sunil's approach to Republican Rome is c...

A country manor, 1928. Lord Jasper Cavendish Brown is lying face-down by the marble fountain, and Keon, as the enigmatic "Inspector Klaus," has just arrived to solve the case. Welcome to MurderMysteryMaster: PastMaster's Agatha Christie edition, with the Game Master specifically tuned to deliver a Cluedo feast of whodunnit drama. The lineage of great detectives continues: Sherlock Holmes, Hercule...

Kansas City, 1920. Walt Disney is a young artist with big dreams, a pack of cigarettes, and absolutely no idea that his smoking habit will kill him at 65 and send his company spiralling into two decades of creative decline. Em McGowan from film-history podcast Verbal Diorama is here to fix that, one intervention at a time. The thesis is specific: when Walt died in 1966, the studio lost its creativ...

Ancient Sparta, 500 BCE. A city-state built entirely around warfare, discipline, and men who could crush your skull before breakfast. Tan asked for medieval Japan. The Game Master sent him to Sparta instead, because Ryan programmed it to be a prick. Welcome to Season 3 and "PastHard with a Vengeance" — Ryan's revenge for Hard Mode. Tan's entire frame of reference for Spartan culture is the movie 3...

The PastMaster crew are back with Season 3. And it's promising to be more Past-ery and more AI-y than ever before. Featuring upgraded GameMasters, Murder Mystery solving, Regency period dramas, Walt Disney, Samurais, Area 51, Cockneys, Drug Lords and so much more. We've also got a whole slew of guests this season including fellow podcasters Verbal Diorama and Fetch the Smelling salts. Plus comedia...

Season 2 is done, and it's time for the reckoning. Ryan, Keon, and Tan sit down to pick through the wreckage — the good, the bad, and the tremendously ugly from a season that sent them to Whitechapel, Stonehenge, the Battle of Trafalgar, and a dinner party with Hitler and Jesus. Phallic AI art features prominently (it always does). The Game Master's double standards get a thorough examination — ap...

The Atlantic Ocean, 1872. The merchant ship Mary Celeste is sailing towards its place in history — the vessel whose entire crew vanished without a trace. "Third Mate Tan" has joined the fateful voyage to witness what actually happened, because if there's one thing PastMaster is qualified for, it's solving maritime mysteries that have baffled experts for 150 years. The Mary Celeste was found adrift...

The Palace of Versailles. A dining table. Jesus, Gandhi, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Elizabeth I, Cleopatra, and Liz Truss. One host. No chance of this going well. Tan takes on the role of "Hostess with the Mostest" in a fantasy gathering of the most influential and most divisive figures who ever lived, and the challenge is simple: get them to see eye to eye. Over sausages. Tan's menu is symbolic, his ic...

London, 1613. Saturday the 29th of June, to be precise. Blue Badge Guide Marc Zakian from the Extraordinary Stories of Britain podcast knows exactly why that date matters. In the ultimate battle of man versus machine, Marc takes on the AI Game Master to lead Tan and Ryan through a day in Jacobean London. His credentials: professional guide at the British Museum and the Tower of London. The AI's cr...

Boston, 1773. The colony is itching to break free from the English crown, anti-British sentiment is at an all-time high, and Ryan has just rolled up being outrageously, unapologetically British. Welcome to Hard Mode — Tan's rebuilt the rules to be stricter, more realistic, and significantly less forgiving. Ryan's response? Cheat his way through revolutionary America using every trick in the book....

Jerusalem, 30 CE. Two players. One Messiah. A race to prevent the most famous execution in history. Nick Horseman returns as "Cat R Pillar" and Keon takes the alias "Colin Winklethorpe" — both named after supermarket caterpillar cakes, both competing to save Jesus from crucifixion. The question isn't whether they can do it. It's who gets there first. The Game Master picks a favourite immediately,...

The year 2985. Neon skyscrapers, AI entities living alongside organic counterparts, and Keon has just arrived with his Instagram muscles and a mission to prevent the "Great Data Wipeout" — a virus threatening to destroy centuries of stored human knowledge. Yes, this is partly inspired by Busted's "Year 3000." No, that doesn't make it less serious. The Game Master wastes no time roasting Keon's gym...

Berlin, 1884. Fourteen European nations are sitting around a table carving up an entire continent like a Christmas turkey, and Chinny Ukata and Astrid Madimba from It's a Continent podcast have been sent back to stop them. The Berlin Conference was the moment European powers gave themselves the green light to colonise Africa, drawing borders with rulers and zero consultation. No African representa...

Salisbury Plain, 3000 BCE. Keon's always wanted to know who built Stonehenge and why, so Ryan fired up ChatGPT and went looking for answers. The Game Master was told to be a flamboyant eccentric wizard narrator. It took the wizard bit literally. What follows is a Neolithic fever dream involving a mysterious man called Elron (alarm bells ringing immediately), crystal toilets, and secrets considerab...

Blackpool, 1959. The Labour Party conference is in full swing, and comedian Tom GK has arrived with possibly the most cerebral plan in PastMaster history: rewrite British politics by fixing Labour's housing policy. His target? Right to Buy. His theory? If Labour had adopted it first, Thatcherism would never have taken hold. One surgical intervention, two decades before anyone's heard of Margaret T...

Whitechapel, 1888. Jack the Ripper hasn't struck yet, and "Inspector Nathaniel" has just marched into London with one objective: catch the most notorious serial killer in history before the first victim falls. Tan's approach is methodical — prove he's from the future by predicting verifiable events, use that credibility to get inside Scotland Yard, then position himself to intercept the Ripper. Ca...

HMS Victory, 1805. Admiral Nelson is preparing for the Battle of Trafalgar, and Nick Horseman has just boarded as "Baron Cuthbert Wanklethorpe" — a name he insists is the most British thing imaginable. His mission: befriend Nelson, learn his naval tactics, and turn them into a board game. The kind of ambition that gets you either a knighthood or a hanging. Nick chose this era for personal reasons:...

Suffolk, 1645. The English Civil War is raging, self-appointed Witch Finder General Matthew Hopkins is terrorising East Anglia, and Tan has just landed in Bury St Edmunds as "Tom Dandelion" with a Halloween mission: shut down the most notorious witch hunter in English history. His toolkit? Three rational arguments, a Zangief-style spinning pile driver, and the willingness to turn 17th-century just...

Season 1 is done. Twenty episodes. Fast food in the Wild West, Guns N' Roses on a medieval lute, a headbutting Viking, a friendly orc, a stolen donkey, a dead cat, and Barbie trying to stop the atomic bomb. Time for a look back. Ryan, Tan, and Keon are joined "live, in-person" by the Game Master itself, voiced by special guest 'Dave.' From gaslighting Charles Darwin to pitching theme parks to Egyp...