In Mark Johnson's most recent Boardgames To Go, he read a comment from Greg Pettit about theme.  Specifically, Greg made a differentiation between theme as metaphor and theme as narrative.  It got me thinking, and I wanted to mention it here before I forgot about it. 

Greg mentioned that we tend to attribute greater weight to narrative/story theme than to theme as metaphor, and I generally have to agree with him.  What I'm not sure about is whether or not narrative theme is actually stronger and therefore more important to the overall theme.  It certainly makes a bigger impression on the play experience, and it is ultimately more memorable.  But theme as metaphor can still be incredibly important, because it sort of frames the activity of the game and helps to explain or validate the actions that take place in it.  

I need to think more about it, so I'll come back to this later. But in the meantime, how does this differentiation strike you?