Random Magic Paths - is it truly random?

[BigDaddy]

You have a 6.9% chance in any game to draw 20 random path mages in a row without getting a blood mage. An actual example of the strange behavior might be more helpful.

I must admit I'm skeptical about the odd behavior not being random. Random systems often spit out nearly patternlike garbage all the time, especially short patterns when the system has a low number of degrees of freedom. But then you never see that pattern again. If you just use a coin for instance you'll get lots of HHHT's, but that doesn't make the toss not random. A large number of degrees of freedom cut down significantly on the number of false patterns, but such a test is for the programmers not for us. Repeatedly getting commander with the same skills and names MIGHT be worrisome, but we were never told the name where random, plus I doubt much double checking was done on the naming system.

On the technical side, it is possible that your computer or operating system is limiting the randomness of the RNG (which would explain why some people are certain of the problem and others aren't so sure). Has anyone using a non-windows OS witnessed this problem?

Also, if the program uses a pregenerated random number list or table, you may very well find yourself in the midst of a pattern, but this type of problem is easily patched with a larger table and more complex seed starting position. This is an entirely plausible problem, but not one I have personally witnessed.

People are not able to generate random numbers themselves, its been shown. They have tendency to just pick a number they haven't picked for a while. It is far more likely for a computer or die to pick 1,2,3 but it is highly unlikely a human would ever do that (unless they knew that was a problem of course). All I'm saying is that human preception of random and actual randomness are quite different. It is also quite unlikely that computers are entirely random, but they are a lot better than people.