by StormKnight
You go to town to sell items for gold.
I've never thought of it that way. I've always thought of it as an item, which has an effect, and a gold value, which mostly just happens to be on the same card. If I had to justify it thematically, I'd probably say it's the "gold" you can get by making use of the card in question - perhaps you use the spear to go hunting, or send one of your militia off for guard duty. (There ARE cards you can use to sell a spear for more gold, in fact!)
But I wouldn't stress too much about justifying it, because while buying new gear is part of the game, it's not a game about being a merchant. It's a game about assembling a party of heroes and sending them to fight monsters. A spear gives a bonus to fighting, and a better bonus if you throw it (thus losing the spear). That's what I want to see when I look for the theme of the game!
Punches are kind of a weak name for them, I'll give you that, but so is "Copper", or "Longspear". It should be "minor income" and "factory of longspears".
Copper you can spend to buy things.
It's a longspear. You poke monsters with it, or throw it at them. That's what a longspear is SUPPOSED to do.
If all the longspear said was "Play for +2 Gold", I'd have some serious thematic issues. Unless we were playing a game about merchants dealing in adventuring gear rather than adventurers themselves.
Just that in this story, sometimes they happen to main characters.
"See, in this story, several different version of Batman from different realities were transported to an alternate reality where they need to make use of their business savvy from Wayne Enterprises to trade rock and wood to build a system of towns, roads and cities big enough to give them enough influence (10 vp worth in fact) to get access to the reality portal and get back to their own world and Gotham City! See how thematic Batmen of Catan is!"
A game is not thematic because we can conceivably justify the theme. It's thematic when we can readily recognize the theme; when we see the theme emerge in the gameplay and match our expectations of it.