Nice. I tend towards "the abilities that would be possessed by a typical member of the group", myself, rather than "every" member. 85%, not 100%. You can always explicitly not take them, after all: the typical Heortling may have "fear dragons", but how many PCs choose to take it? And not all male Heortlings have that spear&shield skill, either.
Hmm, maybe what I'm looking at is more like "abilities which a member of that group would normally be expected to have".
> That group, however, can
> be as small as you like, including being imaginary
> and only actually
> containing the one member who is the character.
Oh, nice! I think I may be doing that, but without explicitly realising it.
> that's still enough of an archtype from which to
> decide whether or not an
> ability should come from that keyword or not.
Yes, it's short-hand for an archetype. Stereotype. Something like that.
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