How to pass group vars to role in playbook?

When test_var is defined inside the playbook it gets passed to the role correctly. However when it’s defined in group_vars/all.yml Ansilbe won’t find it (undefined) and exits with an error:

fatal: [vagrant] => failed to combine variables, expected dicts but got a ‘dict’ and a ‘unicode’

The unicode parameter is actually (Undefined,).