Liam O'Brien

Liam O'Brien is a voice actor, voice director, and a member of the main cast of Critical Role. He plays Orym in Campaign 3.

In previous campaigns, he played Vax'ildan and Caleb Widogast. He has also been the Dungeon Master for several one-shot episodes.

Pre-Stream
Before Critical Role began, Liam and his close friend Sam created a podcast called allworknoplay, with the intention to get more fun into their busy schedules. For Liam's birthday they planned to play Dungeons & Dragons with some friends and shared their experience on the podcast. Towards the end of All Work No Play's second episode, the two of them talked about getting ready for the upcoming "one-time" D&D game. Liam asked Matthew Mercer to run the game, because Matthew kept telling him about the D&D game he was running and often invited Liam to join. Liam enjoyed the game so much that he messaged the other players shortly after, asking if they would like to start a continuing game. They have been playing ever since.

Liam and Laura Bailey decided to play twins in Campaign 1 because they share their birthday, May 28th. Before the game, the two of them spent three hours at a diner creating their character backgrounds.

Before they started streaming, Liam recorded snippets of their gameplay. One can be heard in the second episode of All Work No Play and another one is available on his yotube channel.



Critical Role
While playing as Vax'ildan in Campaign 1, Liam came up with a backup character, a "halfling druid/monk from the Air Ashari, sent by Keyleth’s father, to be of aid to her in her grief". This initial character idea eventually morphed into Orym, his player character in Exandria Unlimited and Campaign 3.

Liam took part in the D&D Beyond Presidential Campaign, a recurring sponsorship segment created by Sam Riegel.

At least until the last episode of the second campaign, Liam was involved in choosing fan art for the slideshows and official art books, which has earned him the title of "Art Dad" from the community.

Main campaigns

 * Vax'ildan, half-elf rogue/paladin/druid (Campaign 1: Vox Machina)
 * Caleb Widogast, human wizard (Campaign 2: The Mighty Nein)
 * Orym, a halfling fighter (Exandria Unlimited and Campaign 3: Bells Hells)

One-shots and miniseries

 * Kurt, human barbarian
 * Reverend Forrest Alton, human
 * Jayne Merriweather, human cleric
 * Liam O'Brien (vampire), vampire ( and )
 * Cookie, a bear
 * Quazirat Tolluz, draenei warrior
 * Ringo, raccoon
 * Ally, human druid
 * Lieve'tel Toluse, elf cleric
 * Tomeytine, honesty earth pony
 * Septimus Goodfellow, celebrity spiritualist
 * Derrig, half elf fighter
 * Buddy, ogre fighter
 * Mordred, the Gaunt, crusader
 * Orym, halfling fighter (Exandria Unlimited)
 * Forrest Coreman, chief of engineering
 * Lucas Dankworth

Other works
Liam began his career in theater before moving on to voice acting in the early 2000s. He also branched out to voice directing, and has worked on several productions, like The Last of Us and Resident Evil 6. A lot of his work revolves around japanese anime dubbing, be it as a voice actor, voice director, or automated dialog replacement writer. One of his most well-known speaking roles is the character Gaara from Naruto.

Personal life
Liam is married to fellow voice actress Amy Kincaid. They have two children together, and own a dog, Sprigg, who was named after the guest character of the same name.

Critical Role is Liam's first "pure" game of Dungeons & Dragons. Before this, he was a Dungeon Master in his sophomore year of high school as well as a player, which, as he states, "is totally cheating." He also ran a Rift game as well as a Cyberpunk game. After Critical Role became such a large part of Liam's life, he began running several D&D games for his children. Liam has stated that D&D has helped him get through a rough patch in his life after he developed hyperacusis.

Trivia

 * He shares his middle name, Christopher, with Matt Mercer.
 * Liam has the second most player characters at 19, behind Travis. He additionally played a non-DM non-player character Cinna Brightbow.
 * His most played class is Fighter, with four characters.
 * More of Liam O'Brien's player characters have died than any other cast member on Critical Role.
 * Six of the characters Liam has played across one-shots and the main campaigns have died. Five of them were beyond resurrection or within a game without resurrection rules at their final death.
 * When asked who he'd pick if he could switch to any player character in Campaign 1, Liam chose Scanlan.
 * Liam's chosen drink on his Between the Sheets interview was mulled wine.
 * As of October 2022, Liam, out of the main cast members, shares his record for attendance with Marisha Ray for the main campaigns with 289 episodes. However, if one-shots are included, he takes first place.
 * Every Halloween, the cast of Critical Role dresses up in costume for one episode. Liam has dressed up as the Dread Pirate Roberts (2015), Tyriok Gadsworth (2016), the Sole Survivor from Fallout 4 (2017), Kylo Ren (2018), Gaara (2019), Astrid (2020), Ashley Johnson (2021), and Cyclops.
 * On Talks Machina, the host Brian Wayne Foster liked to "#ThankMyGuests" with names that are either mispronounced or wordplay that sounded close to their names. Here are the names for Liam O'Brien: