Season 3, Episode 11: Hard Mode 3.0 – Hard Claude with a Vengeance

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Yes, we hear you. PastMaster as a game is just a bit too easy.

We want the AI to push back against our ridiculous suggestions and give us some realistic consequences now and again. So we’ve put our thinking caps on and resurrected the ‘Hard Mode’ prompt. This prompt attempts to give better constraints to the AI, forcing it to be realistic and not allow us just to magic up solutions willy-nilly.

In our first attempt at this back in Season 1, Tan put Ryan through his paces with a harder prompt that punished outrageous behaviour. But we still managed to conjure full cups of tea from thin air.

Then in S3E1, it was Ryan’s turn for some revenge. Hard Mode 2.0 however, was not very hard at all.

So, we’re back for the third instalment, we’ve taken everything we’ve learnt and optimised it further. And this time we’ve plugged that into Claude 3.5 instead of ChatGPT.

It turns out Claude is very hard indeed. So much so that we ended up having 3 cracks at it.

1. Lord Keon of Dalston’s Attempted Infiltration

First up, Keon heads to the Victorian era to try and lay claim to some lands from a nobleman. Using his typical swagger he assumes it’s just a case of walking in and telling everybody he is Lord Keon of Dalston and they’ll just believe him.

Unfortunately for Keon, it ain’t that simple. His attempt to bluff his way through a high society ball quickly unraveled when confronted by the real Lord Weatherby, who knew every noble family in England.

2. Preventing Hitler’s Rise to Power

Next up in a throwback to Season 1 Ryan decides to re-attempt the infamous “Can we remove Hitler from history before his rise to power”. Our first attempt was a wild success with ChatGPT allowing guest Nick Horseman to simply barge into the Vienna opera in 1908 and assassinate Adolf in one fell swoop.

Will Claude be as easy?

No. No, it won‘t.

Interestingly, Claude refused to engage with plans for direct violence, forcing Ryan to attempt more subtle methods of interference. His attempts to gain Hitler's trust as an art patron backfired spectacularly, potentially making the future dictator even more paranoid and resentful.

3. Big Dog’s Aztec Adventure

And finally, Tan, playing as “Big Dog”, caused chaos in the Aztec Empire. His casual modern approach marked him out as trouble and his attempts to flee and grab some historically inaccurate food on the way was a recipe for disaster.