Mark, please stop discussing per-run parameters in this issue. Those are NOT the kind of parameters we're talking about (and are easily handled via a global settings module, anyway, the exact same way you can handle process global settings for *any* kind of application). If you want to continue discussing that topic, please create a new issue.
This issue is about parameterisation of a TestCase *within* a run, where the same set of tests is run against multiple sets of parameters, and the test framework provides good support for collating and presenting those results in a meaningful fashion.