#{ask-team-clst}

Custom organizations in RP tow a line for me. On the one hand, there’s plenty of room to add things like companies, religions, non-profits, activist groups, and all manner of entities that can add some fun fleshing out to characters and stories.

That said, they can also be just as bad, if not worse than OCs with outrageous status or capabilities that push the limits of the lore. This is particularly true with things that are added in the large scale such high ranking officials in custom nations or organizations where the player is basically trying to put their character on a level of authority equal to some of the most influential movers and shakers of a setting. I really hate this because unless your organization can have a justifiable place inside the existing setting’s world framework it really shouldn’t be there; and for some reason it’s always custom military entities. In nearly two decades of RPing I have yet to encounter a custom military organization in any fandom I liked because they always did the same irritating things and always wound up with very few consistent writing partners as a result.

I don’t know if this is just the fact that creating a custom military immediately gives players a sense of power and influence they have complete control over, or if I’ve just had utterly horrid luck with these but every single damn time I’ve ever encountered a custom military organization, no matter the fandom, seems to do the same irritating things. If it’s not a semi-autonomous “special elite” sub-organization that reaps all the benefits of a canon military while not listening to its rules and regulations, it’s an outside force either from a neighboring (commonly custom) nation. Either way, I always see characters from said organization:

Act as if they have full civil and legal authority no matter where they are though some treaty contrivance.

Utterly ignore, disrespect, order around, or otherwise bad mouth members of whatever canon army exists.

Act as if they both have the right to take full command of whatever they’re cooperating with other units with and/or treat any orders or attempts to actually foster any sense of communication be turned down in favor of more order shouting from someone who realistically should have no authority over someone else’s troops.

Any comments, questions, or criticisms being met with consistent threats that aren’t actually enforceable unless they insist on it OOC.

Now all of these are just shitty RP behaviors in general. Rampant disrespect of other people’s muses for little reason, insisting on having full authority over the situation to the point of ignoring the other player’s wishes for the scene, and 

Sometimes the player will even bad mouth or criticize the implementation of whatever canon military is in place (whether or not said player was ever actually in the military tends to be a toss up) to the point of it being kind of obnoxious.