Spinners

[Makkah]

Bob got JUKEd.

[7Seconds]

Kitten broke an axle. Loose 5 posts.

[Rimalon]

Tephrem=Merchant #1.
Cridaliane=Merchant #2.
Spinners are the most rigged and/or weighted thing I've ever seen in my life. No way they're completely random.

Log note: Raelee had just gotten something altered.

---
Speaking to Tephrem, Raelee says, "Thank you, then."

Tephrem smiles.

Raelee nods slowly.

Tephrem says, "You're very welcome."

Tephrem removes a pair of embroidery scissors from in his sewing kit.

Tephrem spins his embroidery scissors.

The embroidery scissors comes to a stop pointing directly at Cridaliane!

Tephrem recovers the embroidery scissors and says, "Congratulations Cridaliane!"

Droit laughs!

Cridaliane smiles.

Tephrem appears to be trying hard not to grin.

Tephrem says, "I thought I'd return the offer."

>look
[Raging Thrak, Trophy Room]
Tiny smudges of soot mar the fieldstones used to create the grand fireplace in this cozy room. A collection of plaques hangs above an immense grey marble mantel cluttered with trophy cups and bowls. Fashioned from a single stone slab, the hearth extends to an impressive black bear rug with its maw frozen in a silent roar. Several overstuffed wingback chairs, each covered in deep jewel-tone chintz, are scattered about the room. Against the back wall, a tall glass-front curio houses several ancient mementos and a thrak hide curtain hangs nearby. You also see the Dimwitt disk, an intricately woven straw wastebasket and a basket of sticks.
Also here: Jair, Missoni, Lord Stormme who is sitting, Ansow, Sodrotordos, Perigourd, Lord Dimwitt who is sitting, Akoe, Anta, Ombrey who is sitting, Droit, Raelee, Great Lord Kireq who is sitting, Kimatra, Arannel, Great Lady Solarbie who is sitting, Fidelity, Cridaliane who is sitting, Emislity who is sitting, Lady Robynn who is sitting, Tailor Tephrem who is sitting
Obvious exits: northeast, east

Tephrem winks at Cridaliane.

Cridaliane says, "Thank you kindly."

Cridaliane smiles at Tephrem.

Tephrem chuckles.

Cridaliane says, "Maybe I will take you up on that later."

Tephrem spins his embroidery scissors.

The embroidery scissors comes to a stop pointing directly at Cridaliane!

Tephrem recovers the embroidery scissors and says, "Congratulations Cridaliane!"

Tephrem grins.

Cridaliane chuckles.

You stare at Tephrem.

Tephrem says, "Um, oops."

Cridaliane says, "Honestly...."

Tephrem chuckles.
Tephrem exclaims, "They really like you!"
Tephrem smiles.

You move to stand in front of Cridaliane.

Cridaliane chuckles.

Tephrem spins his embroidery scissors.

The embroidery scissors comes to a stop pointing directly at Raelee!

Tephrem recovers the embroidery scissors and says, "Congratulations Raelee!"

Tephrem says, "Hmm..."

Raelee glances at Tephrem.

Tephrem says, "They seem to be in a rut."

Tephrem chuckles.

You let out a scream of rage.

Tephrem spins his embroidery scissors.

The embroidery scissors comes to a stop pointing directly at you!

Tephrem recovers the embroidery scissors and says, "Congratulations Rimalon!"

You smirk.

Raelee stares at you.

You calmly say, "Better."

[Methais]

http://iwts.ytmnd.com/

[Asha]

Now they're not actually rigged to choose as such, more like designed to systematically choose Missoni -> Perigourd -> anyone in his group in that order, first.

[Morrff]

You people need some cheese in this thread, I'll leave it to Methais to come through. I'll bet he has some stewing in his draws!

[Methais]

I don't. But Britney does!

[Morrff]

hahaha, see you always come through!

And that's just WRONG!

[MotleyCrew]

They arn't rigged, trust me, I am NO favorite of the GM's, and once on Phoen's Promise, I was spun on like 12 times, no exaggeration. People kept trying to sit on my lap, or rub me for good luck...eesh

[Akaylas]

It's too late and this topic is too much fun!

edit: tl;dr

Part I: Spinners are random.

What is random? There's really no such thing as random. Even in an infinitely long string of digits, there is no "randomness." The closest thing to random you can get is Pi, or E.

In computers especially, this is the. Computers use what they call random number generators. It takes a seed, some sort of base value, and passes it through a carefully calculated equation that will generate a sequence of numbers. The sequence of numbers generated depends on the seed, so changing the seed will change the sequence. It is generally accepted that such sequence will be cyclical in structure, so at some point, you get to Number(N) and then Number(N+1) == Number(0). The most general RNG equation can be expressed as... Xn+1 = (aXn + B) % C, where a, B and C are constants, and n is a subscript denoting which element in the set it is.

A lot of times people use the time as a seed. There are lots of different ways one can interpet times and get vastly different numbers mere minutes apart. A lot of poker sites used to do this until scores of different college students managed to parse data and crack the poker RNG, and allow them to figure out what every possible card in a given hand.

So for Gemstone, they could use a lot of different seeds. The number of chars in a room description, the number of people in a room, time based seed, number of users. The list is endless. But because it goes through an equation, it wont be "random." If it's a good RNG, hopefully the same number wont appear twice. In fact, by what I stated before, if the same number appears twice, then you've gone through that cyclical structure. But who knows, we can't know how good their RNG is without looking at the code.

Of course, what's to say that 2, 3, 4, or even more numbers that could be generated refer to the same person. What if all numbers generated between 11762 - 11798 refered to Akaylas? What if they took the sum of the ASCII values of all the letters in your character's name, summed them, and then generated a number, and whoever was closest to that number in alphabetical order got picked?

Bottomline, you can't say they are random. At best, it's "Pseudo-random." It's kind of shitty pseudo-random (I've been victim to the spinner as well!), but it's not random. Which brings me on to point 2:

Part II: Multifunctionality

If you were designing some method of choosing items from a list (Whether it be items, players, etc), why would you not include the extra functionality to limit your searches, remove items from the possibility set, to include a single item more times (To increase its probability).

What if the spinner program went something like this
.spinner exclude person1, person2... personN
.spinner add person1, person2... personN
.spinner pick person1, person2... personN

Where exclude excludes noted people, add includes noted people additionally in the chosing, and pick randomly picks from the specified people.

To me, this seems like a good idea, regardless of its implications with merchants, to allow the people using the spinners some leverage with their functionality. I think it's just good programming for an interactive tool.

That's not to say maybe a GM just outputs the text of picking whoever they want. That would be the easiest way to do it.

Point of the matter is, Crooked GMs, Shitty Pseudo-Random number generator, either way you're boned. At least, until they start seeding the RNG with feedback from a zener-diode.