It reminds me of the "charm tables" of some Monster Hunter games. Charms are equipment with randomly selected skills. When you create a character, you are assigned a random "table" and all charms you may get are selected from that table. There are 17 of them, 12 of them are normal with some slightly better suited to some play styles but it is a really minor thing, the remaining 5 are called "cursed tables", they are much smaller and you will never be able to get the best charms. It is not game breaking, but it is annoying if you want a highly optimized build.
The reason it happen is that the random number generator has only a small state (I think 16 bits) a limited number of possible rolls, and some seeds have a really short period, which limits it even more. Also, the seed is stored in your save file. It means that if you have a bad seed, you will always have a seriously broken RNG and the only way to change that is to create a new character. I think in later games, the same terrible RNG is used, but a new seed is picked each time you start the game, so you won't stay in the same "table". And while "charm tables" are the most obvious consequence, if probably has other, less noticeable effects on gameplay.
The weird part is that while it is obviously a bug as it negatively affects the experience of some random players, it is rarely referred to as such. It even persisted between versions. Some people even wrote tools to find out early on which table you are, and techniques to get the table you want, along with a variety of RNG manipulation exploits.
The reason it happen is that the random number generator has only a small state (I think 16 bits) a limited number of possible rolls, and some seeds have a really short period, which limits it even more. Also, the seed is stored in your save file. It means that if you have a bad seed, you will always have a seriously broken RNG and the only way to change that is to create a new character. I think in later games, the same terrible RNG is used, but a new seed is picked each time you start the game, so you won't stay in the same "table". And while "charm tables" are the most obvious consequence, if probably has other, less noticeable effects on gameplay.
The weird part is that while it is obviously a bug as it negatively affects the experience of some random players, it is rarely referred to as such. It even persisted between versions. Some people even wrote tools to find out early on which table you are, and techniques to get the table you want, along with a variety of RNG manipulation exploits.