Random Magic Paths - is it truly random?

[PvK]

Alneyan said:
...
- Murphy's Law, obviously. If you need a fire random badly, you will never get that random. Ever. Your neighbours, of course, will have their hands full of Garnet Amazons, sages with a pick in fire, and things of the like. Should you attempt to "convert" their mages, you will end up taking their non-fire mages away.

I just really desperately needed a one-in-eight random magic path pick on a new mage... and I got it.

So, obviously the real explanation is ... I stole your luck!

PvK

[alexti]

Bummer_Duck said:
I have been concentrating on Vanheim for now, and I have noticed that the random magic picks don't seem to be that random. Each game is different, though. In one testbed/game, I may be flush with earth3, blood1 and earth3, Death1 Drawfs, and never get Fire or Astral. In the next game, I don't get any Blood or Death, but get earth3, air1 and earth4. I'm talking about a fairly good sample, of 14+ dwarf mages. While it isn't a huge sample, IMO it shows a pattern of non randomness.

I don't see any pattern in your examples, it looks totally random (I assume that you know that earth3 is fixed and only one path is random). As you said in each game you've got different sequence of randoms which is the right behaviour for randoms. I would get concerned if you've observed something like Astral-Death-Blood-Earth-Air-... pick in every game.