Cancel Your Piss Buckets Sir Issac Newton. Today we Science! (ft Nick Horseman)

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 navigating a world where science and magic haven't quite separated yet. His plan involves falconry and alchemy — turning base metals into gold, which is what every PastMaster player tries to do but with extra mysticism. The complication is that the AI narrating his adventure has opinions about everything, a flair for the dramatic that makes ChatGPT look like a geography textbook, and a willingness to go places its predecessor wouldn't dare.

Oxford in the 14th century was one of the few places in England where intellectual curiosity was encouraged — though "encouraged" is doing a lot of heavy lifting when your neighbours are dying of plague. Claude brings a narrative style that's more literary and considerably less forgiving. Whether Nick can survive both medieval superstition and an unhinged narrator is the question.