More Titles Revealed

If it's not obvious, I'm pretty excited about the coming GURPS kickstarter, so much so that I've been rather surprised to find others much less enthusiastic, even disdainful of the idea. Understanding why has been an interesting experience for me, but that's not really the point of today's post.  Instead, I'm going to fanboy over the recently revealed material.

First, some context as to why I'm excited.  I would argue that the golden age of GURPS was actually relatively recent and roughly began with the release of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1.  At some point, we had close to weekly PDF releases, and certainly monthly releases.  Then it dropped to just Pyramid. Then that ended and we were promised more PDFs to compensate, and that only sort of materialized.  Meanwhile, a majority of material coming out for GURPS was Dungeon Fantasy.  Now, I get it.  While I don't boost Dungeon Fantasy here, that's more because there are other people better at it than I am and I would rather serve another niche.  I've played it, and enjoyed the experience sufficiently that I've basically stopped following all other "Fighting Fantasy" RPGs to focus on DF.  But to me, the point of GURPS has always been its broad flexibility, and turning it into "the other D&D game" would be a shame.

So, to see that there will be 12 new PDFs (that's 1 a month for the next year, all at once) has been quite a shot in the arm for my enthusiasm, and to see that DF will be in the decided minority also pleases me.  I'm fine that it gets support!  I just want to see a few other things get some love, and they will in this kickstarter.

The downside of this approach will be that we'll get a grab-bag rather than "What we want," but for $3, I don't really care. If one of them is worth it, that will be enough.  And who am I kidding: I'm going to spend the $100. I have quite a back log.

But what I really wanted to do was go over what I thought of the recently revealed titles.

Action 6: Tricked Out Rides

I'm happy to see anything Action, but I approach this one with mixed feelings.  I absolutely want to see rules for altering and souping up vehicles, and I have no doubt that I'll integrate some of these rules into Psi-Wars, because if Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt taught me anything, it's that fighter aces and smugglers want to personalize their rides. That's the "upside" of the book.

The downside is we have yet another book that teases at Vehicles.  We need a book like this because we can't figure out a reasonable way to mod vehicles ourselves.  Of course, even if we had that, some people would still want a simplified version of it (You don't need Loadout Books, but damn, they're handy), but still, I see works like this and miss a Vehicles book.

Hot Spots: the Incense Trail

I tend to find setting books useless until I need them, then I find they can't have enough material.  This wil likely be a Matt Rigsby book, which means it'll be wonderful, and likely illuminate a part of history and the world I knew little about, making it a fascinating read.  The most likely use I'll get out of it in the short-term, though, is pilfering it for exotic locales in Psi-Wars.

How to be a GM: Ritual Path Magic

No. Sorry.

Look, I get that Ritual Path Magic is wildly popular with a certain segment of the GURPS fan base, and its freeform nature lends it well to someone looking to just get started, and so some advice to a new GM who wants to try something that isn't GURPS Magic is probably welcome.  But I am not that person.  I don't really need tips on how to GM something like Ritual Path Magic, as I'm quite confident I could do a very good job of it.  And I also wouldn't, because I don't like Ritual Path Magic. It hits pretty much every peeve I have about flexible magic (though Christopher Rice has a nice couple of Pyramid Articles that fix some of my complaints and would be some of the first things I would institute if I were to run an RPM game).  So this is a double no from me: I don't need a How to GM Book, and I don't need RPM.  But I don't begrudge its existence.

Steampunk Setting: the Broken Clock World

I smell Stoddard on this one, and I find him very hit and miss.  Some of the best GURPS books I've ever read are his (Social Engineering, Powers: the Weird, GURPS: Supers) and some of the worst (Template Toolkits 2: Races, Portal Realms).  Even when I like his stuff, I tend not to like all of it (and even when I don't like his stuff, there's usually something I can find in there that I can salvage). And, as above, setting books tend not to be my bag.  I find I rarely use them.

On the other hand, I'm quite enamored of the idea of a Steampunk setting, and I've been tracking his Steampunk works for awhile. I've not been interested enough to pull the trigger, but with the other deals this Kickstarter involve, I may well end up with an expanded collection of Steampunk stuff.  A setting book goes a long way to giving me something to do with the rest of his framework.  I think how I feel about this one will depend on the quality of the setting.

Action 7: Mercenaries

Yay!  Action! But what is it? If I had to guess, we're probably looking at a Sidekicks book, something that gives us access to pre-gen, low-level characters (60-125 point characters) that we can slot in as allies, or use as a basic template for mooks.  If so, this could be a really good step forward for Action.  As noted in my series on Mooks, Action really suffers from a lack of foes.  Sure, you can say "They're goons with guns, nyah nyah, they're shooting at you," but I find players tie of that pretty quickly. They want some variety. They want guys with slightly different guns who use them slightly differently.  If so, such a book would be very interesting.

Dungeon Fantasy 21: Megadungeons

Oh no!  Dungeon Fantasy!  If you ever needed proof of what I mean by how much love DF gets, note that we're talking about GURPS Action 7 and GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 21.  Yeah. But if we're going to get DF, I'd rather it was, you know, DF, and not DFRPG (I don't mind DFRPG; I own it! But it's a cut down version of DF; I usually find the original material better, more complete and more powerful).

That said, hmm, megadungeons.  Labyrinths. Megadungeons. Labyrinths.  This might be very useful.  I've been thoroughly pilfering DF (and Underground Adventures, and Creatures of the Night) for my Labyrinth Material, and I still have more coming out (It's taking so long).  Some help here would be most appreciated, so a look through a megadungeon (which the Labyrinth effectively is) will help a lot!

Is it worth it?

For me? Well, yeah! I definitely want three already: Action 6, Action 7, and DF 21. I'd only really turn my nose up at one.  The other two look promising.  If these were sold at full price, I would almost certainly snap up the first three at full price ($6 each?) and the latter two mind end up waiting for a sale (Say $6 for both).  So you're looking at roughly $25 of value for... $3.  So, yes.  I'm sold.  I'm also quite curious what the last six will be.  We'll find out on Wednesday!

This Deal Is Getting Worse All The Time

For SJGames.  Seriously, what are they getting out of it?

(Well, I think I know.  Let's speculate!)

So, recently SJGames announced a PDF Kickstarter, which I found a very interesting idea, but watching more and more details come out have had my eyebrows climbing through that little remains of my tattered hairline.  I will walk you through my logic.

First, we knew there was going to be a kickstarter for 12 PDFs. I found this an intriguing proposal, though some people bristled on the facebook group. My experience with kickstarters is that they're usually designed for print. You want to print a book, but you want to know exactly how many to print, so you run a kickstarter, find out who your customers are, print exactly that many (maybe with +10% or so, I don't know what the excess would be, to cover late-comers).  So why do it for PDFs?

Well, I think what people miss about kickstarter is the excitement of it. It's a moment in time, this flash of hype and wonder where you feel like you're participating in the creation of a thing  It has the patter and speed and excitement of an auction.  It's a rush. Even if you're just a backer, you want to check in to see that it gets funded.  You nibble your nails if it isn't funded yet. You get excited as it nears its completion.  As it finishes, and then starts to hit stretch goals, you're elated, not just because it's happening, but because you feel like you're part of it. You're part of this greater community making this great thing happen.  You feel emotionally invested.

So why not sell PDFs this way?  I mean, they sit there, gathering dust on the shelves of e-stores, yet pretty much every kickstarter I've ever seen of an established line offers pdfs of older works as part of its line-up.  But, like, why? I mean, anyone could go in and buy those from the e-store at anytime, so why offer them there?  My guess is they're offered because they sell, because running a kickstarter raises the profile of the game a lot.

Then I found out the next thing: the PDFs, all 12, will be $3.  Not $3 per PDF, which is a great deal as most PDFs are at least twice that price, but $3 will buy you all 12 PDFs.

LOLWUT?

Okay. Um.  Alright.  I didn't see how they'll pay for it all, but sure, I'll give you $3 for 12 PDFs.  I'll do better than that. I'll donate more. I calculated what I felt was a fair price: $60.  I'll donate $60.  For the cause.

Then today.  And like the clouds parting and the rays of heaven spilling forth, it made sense: this is to entice us to spend spend spend on back PDFs.  If I'm willing to spend $30, half of my $60, I get $30 worth of PDFs for free.  So I get the PDFs for free.  But if I'm willing to spend $100, not only will they give me the PDFs for free, they will give me discounted PDFs.  How can I say no to that? I, who was planning on spending $60, am now planning on spending $100. Success achieved.

One of the reasons I'm planning on it is that I have quite a backlog on my wishlist.  I mean, why not get those pdfs?  But why didn't I get them before?  Part of it is that they weren't on sale.  Another reason is I didn't have this time-limit.  Part of me is thinking "If I spend that $100, it helps the whole kickstarter and we'll all get more PDFs" so my dollars feel like they're more useful and less selfish now than if SJGames were to offer a -20% off sale, which is essentially what they're offering me.  And why not offer that to me? Those PDFs on my wishlist are making them no money.  But if I spend that $100 now, then they have it now.

There was an article I read in Pyramid #2, ages and ages ago, about a guy's experience in retail, when he held a charity sale.  He discounted everything in his store and noted that some portion (I don't remember if it was 100% or 10% or 50%, whatever it was) went to a particular charity.  It was to help with some recent disaster. Anyway, he never moved more product in his life.  He noted in his conclusion that if you give people a moral reason to buy what they were going to buy anyway, and give it to them on a deal, so it appeals to both their greed and their sense of compassion, you've double-whammied them, and you'll sell ridiculously well.  That article really stuck with me, and I've noticed the tactic again and again: it's Humble Bundle's model, and politicians use it a lot.  I think this is a similar approach (in fact, upon reflection, it is very like Humble Bundle): if you spend, not only are you getting a great deal, and supporting your favorite game, but you are supporting your community by helping those $3 guys get their 12 PDFs.

Whew.  What a great strategy!  I hope it works out, but more than that, I think it will work out.  This is smart marketing!  Especially how they're slowly building it up, and being so interesting that people like me will, without prompting, babble about it excitedly to my fellow GURPSers. I think you owe it to yourself to follow this one closely.  I think this may well lead to a renaissance in GURPS marketing, which could lead to a springtime for GURPS as it joins the ranks of regularly successful kickstarters, but while also returning to its generic roots (I don't mind Dungeon Fantasy, I just don't want GURPS to become "the dungeon fantasy line").  And it's a freaking good deal.  I would definitely follow this if I were you.

The Skairos

For Patreons (Fellow Travelers, $3+), the Skairos preview is now available.

• For Subscribers
• For Patrons

Into the Labyrinth: The Madness of the Labyrinth (Doppelgangers and Astral Parasites)

Those who go into the Labyrinth sometimes come out... changed.  They may gain great psychic powers and a malevolent hunger, or return with memories of alternate timelines and murderous intent.  They call this the Madness of the Labyrinth, but these often come from specific monsters or experiences found in the Labyrinth.

Destiny is a strange advantage

If you search "Destiny" on p
pinterest, all you get is
references to some weird
Warframe knockoff

My apologies for my absence from the blog lately.  I write, because I always write, and I've managed to build quite a backlog of material that I should wind up and publish, but recent events in my home country have weighed heavily on my heart and I find it difficult to concentrate of focus. I say this not in pursuit of sympathy, but as way of apology and explanation.

One of those things that I've been obsessed with lately, after playing Cultist Simulator (which, I must confess, likely also plays some small factor in my absence from the blog) is the Destiny advantage and a more thorough treatment of it. This has led to me making a deep dive into Destiny in GURPS, as well as its treatment in other RPGs, and the result has left me scratching my head and more disappointed than I expected at a paucity of Destiny mechanics in other games, as well as the surprising lack of support of the Destiny advantage.

The first thing I notice is the mean-spiritedness of the text, talking about punishing those who try to avoid their fate, or suggesting that maybe a character who achieves a glorious destiny might, like, immediately die thereafter.  This, I suppose, is meant to prevent people from exploiting the advantage, but what is the purpose of an advantage if not to be exploited.  I think if I took a 15-point Destiny Advantage to, say, become King, and the GM allowed it, if my character became king and was immediately killed thereafter by some jealous courtier, or I "technically" become king because some looney cultist crowned me the "King of Fools," I'd feel pretty cheated.  I'll chalk that up to the legacy of GURPS being originally from an era of a more hostile GM/Player relationship than is fashionable in today's gaming culture.

The next thing I notice is that I can't find it anywhere.  I've done quite a few searches for Destiny in various books or works featuring worked NPCs, and it doesn't show up at all, and I've only found a few templates with it: the True King in GURPS Fantasy and the Mystic in Horror.  Of all the campaign frameworks, only Monster Hunters allows its highly modified version of it.  I can't actually remember a single PC taking it in any game of mine.  In fact, I searched over several books for a reference to it, and while a lot of things talk about how to use it (Curses might create negative destinies; precognition might act as a form of Destiny, and lots of references to lower-case "d" destiny), there are no worked examples of it.

Why doesn't anyone take Destiny?

I think the core problem with Destiny-as-written is that, first of all, it's very nebulous.  There are other nebulous traits, like Higher Purpose, but this brings us to the second problem: Higher Purpose gives a concrete benefit, while Destiny doesn't.  Destiny acts more like a compact to allow a particular story.  For example, if I'm destined to Reclaim my Rightful Throne then you, as the GM, agree that there is a throne, it is rightfully mine, and I'll reclaim it.  What does that mean in practice?  I dunno.  But at some point, that needs to happen. For 5-15 points, that's a pretty steep price to pay for a nebulous promise from a GM that, at some point, I'll achieve my destiny, with no promises after that (what happens when I reclaim my throne?  Can I lose it immediately? Rules say yes).

You can find a thread on the forums exploring it, mostly griping on these topics (To my embarrassment, I'm in the thread.  Oh those were the days). I think they hit on a core problem there: you're paying a lot of money for something that will happen eventually.  Maybe.  If the campaign lasts that long.  Now, me personally, I find a good rule of thumb is you shouldn't rely on a campaign lasting more than 3-5 sessions.  Sure, there are campaigns that last years, and I've certainly run my share, but even then, I'm strongly of the opinion that pretty much every trait should see some use in 3-5 sessions under ideal circumstances.  Setting aside 15 points for something that might happen 50 sessions later feels like a waste, especially given how much can change in a campaign after 50 sessions.

It should be noted, even worse, that you don't actually choose your destiny.  The GM does.  You purchase Destiny 5-15, and the GM decides what to do with it.  That's how it's written!  So, essentially, it's really just a promise to have something cool happen to your character.  This feels a bit like Common Sense, where GURPS charges you for something the GM should be giving you "for free" anyway. It also violates other secret advantages I've seen, which should give you double their value when revealed.  So is a 15 point Destiny actually a 30-point trait?!  Nope, because by the rules, once your destiny is achieved, you can convert it into Reputation on a point-for-point basis.

Monster Hunters did a lot to fix this by giving Destiny a fixed mechanical benefit in the form of Impulse Buys, and I love this version, but it's left me scratching my head.  Christopher Rice dives more deeply into it in "Impulse Control," but I must confess it left me even more confused.  See, as I understand it, this new version of Destiny replaces the original rules for Destiny by treating it as generic trait (you are never destined for something), and you get 1 impulse buy point per 5 points spent.  This makes sense: if you buy an expendable piece of signature gear, such as bullets, you pay 5 times the cost and then you always have a single use of that expendable gear per session, right? So you spend 5 points to have one expendable impulse buy point per session.  But that's not how it actually works.  You recover 1 impulse buy per session.  So, if you spend 5 points, you have one impulse buy point at the beginning of the game, and if you spend it, you'll recover 1 per session.  If you double that cost, you have two impulse buy points (okay, makes sense, twice the points for twice the power) and you'll recover... one per session.  And if you pay 15, you'll start with three and recover 1 per session.  So, a 5-point destiny looks the same as a 15-point destiny character, if they spend 1 impulse buy point per session, except that for the extra 10 points, the 15-point destiny character can spend 2 extra destiny at some point.  I'd rather pay 7 for that, if I'm honest: 5 points for the 1 impulse buy per session, and 2 spare points I can use "at some point."

Impulse Control helps by offering some new options and converting existing luck-manipulation advantages into forms of Destiny, and discussing how to increase the number of destiny points per session.  It suggests a stand-alone advantage worth 10 points per +1 destiny point, but I'm not clear what the thought process behind that is; you're effectively paying 15 per +1 IP and +1 IP refreshed!  You don't "save points" until after 15 sessions at least, and it doesn't really break down well for other traits.  For example, Chris suggests Luck might be Destiny 1 (Aspected, rerolls only -20%) [4] + 2 IP per session [10].  This means you recover 2 IP per session, but you can only have one (so how does that work), and you get a single Luck-style reroll per session, or two if you allow the character to go over their limit.

I find the idea of Aspecting the IP from Destiny to be a very interesting one, as it fits my vision of Destiny better.  I rather like the idea of Destiny being a way of declaring what your character is fated for, which is sort of how it's sold in the core book (except for it being secret).  By declaring what you intend to be, you can sort of help direct the story a bit, and this also fits with the other uses of the trait, such as a curse being an Affliction that gives you some disadvantageous destiny or, more importantly, the "temporary" destiny suggested with Precognition, which has some interesting interactions with the Impulse Buy rules.

So let's explore a few possible variations.

First, what happens if we dispense with the 1 IP per session recharge rate and go with every 5 destiny gives one point of IP per session.  This seems much more intuitive to me, and more obvious.  If you have Destiny 15, you get 3 IP per session, period, whether or not you use them.  Thus, Destiny [15] is 3 times more useful than Destiny [5].  The problem with this is that Serendipity is only really worth essentially 2 points of Impulse Buy, but is 15 points, so that skews the trait cost.  It doesn't for Luck though: Luck is (assuming a 4-hour session) roughly on par with a 20-point Destiny with Aspect (Rerolls only -20%), clocking in at 16 points.  So this might have some issues.

If we assume the "directed destiny" idea, that's essentially an aspected version of Impluse Buys, thus -20% to the cost.  So, buying 2 IP is 8, rather than 10 points, and buying +1 refresh (thus 2 IP per session) is 8 points, giving us 16 points total for 2 IP per session.  You're still paying about 12 points per +1 IP, though.

A "Temporary" Destiny should be a "one off." If I look into your future and I see that you're going to win the next fight, I might give you a Destiny to win that fight, and once that fight is done, so is your trait.  This is a single-use trait, which are... 1/5 the cost.  So if that's a Destiny [15], that's 3 points.  And that gives you... 3 IP to use.  That's convenient!  But it also returns us back to our idea that 1 IP per session should probable be 5 rather than 3 (that is, you're better off collecting a series of temporary destines every session than you are buying 15 destiny, even though they should be literally the same thing).

But what if we treated all Destiny as like Temporary Destiny?  Rather than give the PC 1 IP per session and up to 3 for 15 points, what if we... just gave them 15 impulse buy points?  Chris addresses this in his article and points out that points that don't ever recover are just... earmarked CPs.  And that seems an interesting idea too.  5-, 10- and 15-point Destinies grant this highly specific magnitude of power: you get this number of IP points to spend, and when they're gone, your destiny "is fulfilled."

This feels somewhat arbitrary, like why earmark them at all, but if we give our Destiny an aspect, like "I shall reclaim my rightful throne," then we're effectively getting a "promise" from the GM for free.  We can even assign the -20% modifier to our cost, requiring our points to be aspected.  This means that we should get 6 IP for every 5 CP spent.  That seems like "free points," and it is, but we're taking CP that you could spend on your character, turning it into IP that you can't and limiting how those IP can be spent! You get your GM/Player compact "for free," as you should, you get a small IP reward for that fact, and you're limited in how you can spend your IP, mainly in advancing your destiny.  We could even stick with the rule from GURPS Basic where, once your destiny is achieved,  you can spend your Destiny points in traits.  In this case, what IP you didn't spend get converted back into CP that you can spend on traits appropriate for your destiny.  Again, we're getting free points... but it amounts to 1 per 5 points invested in Destiny, which is a far cry from the 2 cp per 1 invested in most secret traits, and it feels like a reasonable reward for someone who has managed to achieve their Destiny... and it assumes they didn't spend any IP to begin with.

Thoughts on Occulted Systems

So, based on a positive review, I buckled down and picked up a game I had been eying for awhile: Cultist Simulator. I am completely obsessed with it now, as it's absolutely the sort of game I've desperately wanted for a very long time, and it's devouring more of my free time than I should really allow.

But it did get me thinking about a perennial bugbear of mine, namely magic systems and a lot of my gripes of them.  Cultist Simulator helped me clarify what it is I actually want to see in such a game, or what I'd like to try to explore.

See, in Cultist Simulator, they explain nothing to you.  You have to experiment on your own and figure it all out, and it's pretty complicated stuff.  It's just random enough be uncertain if a failing result is a matter of a bad choice or if you've just gotten unlucky, though not so random that you feel like you couldn't guess.  There are systems that underly things that tend to have a surprising number of moving parts, and while the game (seems to) give you enough information to figure it out, though it's not obvious, and even if you think you know, there may still be some deeper thing to learn.  The fact that these various, abstract concepts have pretty obscure and symbolic names only makes it more fun (My character solved the riddle of the Stag's Door, which was about a queen who never was, and passed through it to become one of the Know.  Now he hungers for the minds of others. Until the Worms came for him).

In short, Cultist Simulator treats the Occult as a mystery to be investigated, which is something I feel a lot of magic systems lack.  Given that I'm thinking about this all the time right now, I thought I might as well right about it, to get it off my chest and maybe give you some ideas as well, dear reader.

Into the Labyrinth: the Nerlochs and the God Below

Not every creature of the Labyrinth is Skairosian in origin. Other things have invaded the winding tunnels beneath the surfaces of Labyrinthine Worlds.  They might be elder things from beyond space and time, or they might be the corruptions twisted by the influence of Broken Communion.

The Nerlochs are one such race that lurks in the Labyrinth, coming out of the tunnels for furtive raids to steal sustenance (and recruits) for their God Below.  They'r eoriginally found in GURPS Creatures of the Night 1. I think they're one of the better entries in the Creatures of the Night Series and thematically very appropriate to Psi-Wars.

I would have just pointed you to them and been done with it, but they have some problems fitting into Psi-Wars as written. By default, Nerlochs are clearly designed to be a modern horror that takes on opponents of about 100 points, not sci-fi space knights of 300+ points. Thus, these have been heavily adapted and cleaned up for Psi-Wars.  What's below is a highly specific and highly adapted version of the Nerlochs more suitable for Psi-Wars.  I'd say they were just "inspired" by the original entry, but I wanted to highlight their origins and point you to where they came from, rather than completely erasing the serial number, because I think CotN is a good series worth supporting. Thus, I've completely left off any discussion of Anagon himself, except for hints in the form of the new Children of Anagon.  An appropriate new version of the God Below would probably be much bigger and much more terrifying than what Creatures of the Night lists. So, if you want to know more, check out the book!

Even in this current iteration, Nerlochs aren't that much of a threat. A well-entrenched commando will mow through them; space knights might have more trouble, as they're in range of those dangerous eldritch talons.  Gunslingers might also suffer, as they tend not to wear a lot of sealed armor.  Ultimately, Nerloch hunting comes down to be able to outsmart them, and standing up to a mob of paralytic talons lead by a hungry, hulking thing-beast. It might be fun to hit a party with a small Nerloch raid of 3-5 nerlochs, and then have the gibbering ghouls following them at a distance, visible only as the glow of their gems, as anticipation mounts for a sudden, major assault of hordes of Nerlochs over some treacherous precipice.

Ultra-Tech Guns: Gun Weight

Alright, so I've looked pretty closely at damage.  Today, I wanted to look at weights, as I'm pretty sure those are pretty easily determined also with Vehicles.  Let's see, shall we?  Once again, we'll take a look at several Ultra-Tech guns and see if the Vehicles gun design system gets them close to correct.  Once again, I'll note the formula, which is

B^2 * L * P * S * T * R

Where B is boresize, L is a value based on the length of the barrel, P is power (1, in our case), S has to do with bore size as well, T has to do with technology (we'll use 0.6 for this value) and R has to do with  reload time (1 for us).

If we use these values for pistols we get:

• The Heavy Pistol: We expect a weight of 1.8, and if we assume an "extremely short" barrel, which is what we got for damage, we get 1.5. Not too far off.
• The Holdout Pistol: we expect a weight of 0.8, and we get... almost exactly 0.8 (assuming an extremely short barrel)
• The Magnum Pistol: we expect a weight of 2 lbs, and we get ~3.4
• The Medium Pistol: we expect a weight of 1.5 and we get 1.7

These aren't too bad if we do some rounding off with ammunition, except for the Magnum pistol, which is much heavier than it should be.  Worse, there's no real indication as to what's wrong.  The Heavy Pistol is "too light," and the Medium Pistol is "too heavy," so there's no obvious trend, such as all the pistols being too light or too heavy.

If we jump straight to rifles, we get:

• The Anti-Materiel Rifle: We expect about 28 lbs.  With a Very Long rifle, we get the right damage, but it's too heavy at ~34 lbs.  If we assume Long, then the weight is correct, but the damage is low.
• The Assault Carbine: We expect 5.5 lbs, and we get 5.5 if we assume a Long barrel (odd for a Carbine); damage lines up too (it's a bit high, though).  If we assume the Assault Carbine is a "heavy automatic" then the barrel should be medium (that also gives us 5.5) and the damage drops to 5d+1, which is too low.
• The Gatling Carbine: We expect it to be 8 lbs, and if we assume a medium barrel and a triple barreled gatling motor (what it's described as having), we get a weight of 5.8 (too light) and a damage of 4d+1, which is close.  If we go for Long barrels, we get a weight of 8.8 and a damage of 5d.
• The Hunting Rifle has effectively the same stats as a Long Barrel 7mm, both for damage and weight.
• The Payload Rifle: this has ~28 lbs, and if we assume low-powered ammo and a medium barrel, we get ~23 and ~9 damage.  It feels like it's been fudged/iterpolated up.
• Storm Carbine: we expect this to be 6 lbs.  If we assume a medium barrel and "light" automatic, we get 7.5 lbs (too heavy) and 7d+1 damage or so, which is close.
• Storm Rifle: We expect this to be 8.8 lbs and if we assume a long barrel, we get 11 lbs, but exactly correct damage.

So, I see a consistent pattern here: the damage and weight values seem pretty closely correlated: if a particular configuration is off, it's generally off for both. If the weight is high, the damage is high, and if the weight is low, the damage is low.  So this is another value that more or less looks right, as though it was developed using the same system with, perhaps, some fudge values.

So weight looks about right, and damage looks about right, if you assume designs were fudged.