Hah! A RuneQuest question - I can contibute on those without saying I haven't got the rules.
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Originally Posted by Tywyll
What roll did they actually fulfill originally? Did characters embody runes, or gain power from them somehow? I know how MRQ does it, and I know that's not like how it used to be, so the question is... what did it used to be?
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Runes were always higher-powered or were for higher beings.
Gods were associated with Runes, some had 2 many had three. The Runes influenced the type of magic the god had, to a certain extent, so Storm Gods had storm-based magic, Death gods had death-based magic and so on.
Individuals who progressed in cults tried to become Rune Priests or Rune Lords. Rune Lords were considered to have gained the Mastery Rune and Rune Priests were considered to have gained the Magic Rune.
And that's about it, really.
Seriously, that's as big a contribution as Runes made in RQ1/2/3.
The name had virtually nothing to do with the game, really.
Various forms of HeroQuest Rules for RQ used runes in various ways, but they were all non-standard houserule systems.