>From: Stephen Tempest <e-g_at_...>
>
>But they're still stereotypes... the male Heortling keyword includes
>'Farming' and 'Spear and Shield Combat', implying that the typical
>Sartarite man has those skills - and if you did a keyword for a modern
>Western country, you might have 'Drive car' and 'Operate computer' as
>typical skills. But that doesn't mean that every single person in that
>culture has them - so varying the skills in the keyword is perfectly
>acceptable.
Stephen makes a good point here. There's been a lot of introspection in some parts (mine, for one), about what precisely the criteria should be for a keyword, and what falls into it.
Here's the current definition that I'm using, one that Mark Humphreys came up with: A keyword contains all of the abilities that would be had by every member of some group of which the keyword is archtype description (understanding that there will be exceptions, but that these will be in the form of ommitted abilities, or "other" abilities). That group, however, can be as small as you like, including being imaginary and only actually containing the one member who is the character.
The example given is that of "Kings Assassin." If you have the skills taught to you by the previous King's Assassin, and are now the only one alive, that's still enough of an archtype from which to decide whether or not an ability should come from that keyword or not. "Soldiers Who Are Me" is not a group to which another character could belong. That is, a keyword should not be "What my specific experiences were with obtaining the other skills of the keyword in question."
Thus, if you have the keyword "Tarsh Border Patrol" it might look like a warrior with some adjustments for the locale, situation, job implied, ect. But what you can't say is, "Well, as a Tarsh Border Patrol member, I tended to cook for the group, so my character has cooking at keyword level." That's too specific to the character's experience. If, however, you argue that "Everyone in the Tarsh Border Patrol had to take turns cooking, else we would have starved out on the frontier..."? That a narrator might buy.
Otherwise you buy cooking with "other" abilities (usually starting at 13).
I'm sure there are other functional criteria for what can be claimed to be within a keyword and what is not (another typically used one is to assume that, in fact, the keywords provided cannot be altered, and that to get a similar character type, you have to take the nearest keyword, and add to the character with "other" abilities to get what you want).
Mike
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