I also hear good things about Runescape, and Last Night on Earth, but haven’t played either one myself.

I couldn’t agree more. There’s nothing worse than playing in what should be a familiar system that a DM has “tweaked” into an unrecognizeable mess.

Anyway my two cents worth.

Taking it away from the table top context, look at the great American past time of baseball. No real theme there. Just a game of dexterity and skill. But competition is fun. Clearly, there are other reasons to enjoy games than the RP opportunities they provide.

Or, sometimes a game with a great theme (like Twilight Imperium) nevertheless is not that fun to play (for me at least) because of its mechanics. But, by your metric, Twilight Imperium – or some of the lengthier war games – would be “better” games for no other reason that they had a theme. Despite the fact they are a bore to play and may be mechanically unwieldy or broken.

So theme, while important, cannot be the sole metric of judgment. And, while you can say that Monopoly has more of an RP aspect (or better theme) than Dominion, I think its unfair to say that on that basis alone, Monopoly is a “better” game.

Plus, if the measure of a game comes from the individual’s ability to simulate a role-play type experience, that also makes every game completely subjective. Maybe you are better at role-playing zombie tag, and I’m better at seeing my state in Dominion and role-playing a barron (or whatever the theme of the game is). I guess that would make Dominion “better” for me and tag “better” for you. Once we reach that level of abstraction, no game can really be said to be “better” than another.

You’re trying to apply your personal way of approaching a game to the rest of the world but they don’t work like that – most people, for better or worse, live in the here and now and aren’t interested in imagination.

Oh and Dominion is a lot of fun, especially if you don’t try to imagine yourself building a kingdom but rather focus on the strategy behind the game.