Robert Hartley was born and raised in West Yorkshire, England. After leaving High School he studied for two years at Wakefield College and graduated with a Btec National Diploma in Performing Arts (Acting). Soon after this he moved to New Zealand where he studied at Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School and graduated with a Bachelor in Performing Arts (Acting) in late 2010. In 2017 he went back to university to study Science and put acting on the back-burner for a while. Around the same time, he discovered the Tabletop Roleplaying game, Dungeons & Dragons, and fell in love with it in a major way. While studying a Bachelor of Science at the University of Auckland, he also played a lot of D&D, and by the time he graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Applied Mathematics) in 2020, he had been introduced to New Zealand based comedy group, Viva La Dirt League, and started running D&D games for their content. The popularity of that series allowed Robert to focus on that as his full-time career, as well as streaming on Twitch and making videos for YouTube. He has been living and working as a D&D creator in New Zealand since then.