After growing up on a diet of Gerry Anderson, Action Man and Star Wars, with a dad who had to make any fancy dress costume look film quality, it was no surprise that he discovered D&D as an art student. He’d heard about this mythical castle, near Chester, where they did Live D&D but by the time he’d tracked it down, Treasure Trap had folded.
In 1990, running a street based youth-work project in Gloucester, he found a group of bored young people who played the Warhammer RPG. He arranged for them to use a local community centre and used their games to introduce topics he wanted to talk about with them, as abstract concepts. They also experimented with other games.
It became obvious that Larp would open things up for the group, so he found some local systems.
He was hooked.
He must have made an impression at Summerfest in 91 because when the Lorien Trust started planning the Gathering for the following year he was asked to NPC as a faction leader. By this time he was doing something every weekend- either with the youth group, playing or crewing.
In 1993 he decided to go freelance, offering LRP experiences through youth work, and set up “Behind The Mask” running crafting workshops, LRP events, occasionally making props to order.
The making part very quickly took over and before long Andy was trading full time, as well as running a system.
In 2001 he went back to youth work full time, closing down Behind The Mask.
He continued crewing (mainly Lorien Trust) and started making to order, as Offa Studio, as a hobby.
He got involved with Profound Decisions in 2010 as part of the design team for their new fest system Empire- mainly working on the look of the game. When Empire launched he was asked to NPC as the owner of The Forge Tavern, along with set dressing and props. Eventually dropping the NPC role, he is still playing some parts as crew and concentrating on the backstage side.
In 2016 following redundancy from work, Offa Studio went full time, relocating Andy to Scotland, working with Sean and co at Skian Mhor.
He can still be found role-playing, when he can, alongside trading.