The "special thing" about Runes is that they do exactly what BRC20 was doing (defining, minting, and transferring tokens), but it does so in OP_RETURN outputs, which do not get added to the UTXO set, in a blockspace efficient manner. So, it’s simply better in all dimensions than BRC20 tokens at what BRC20 tokens supposedly do, without resulting in an incentive to create minuscule abandoned outputs. And it was created by the inventor of Ordinals which probably makes it even more blessed in some circles. :shrug: