I don't have much to add to the Beyond the Stars discussion, but I will say that "virtually incomprehensible" can be much more terrifying than incomprehensible.
Almost incomprehensible can be the horror equivalent of having a word on the tip of your tongue and failing to find it. It is the square with 5 sides: you can comprehend its squareness and its fiveness, but that very recognition makes attempts to grasp the rest worse. Heck, it is recognizing spheres and then seeing the Banach-Tarski paradox demonstrated. It is the glimpse of a human motive, only to find it is nothing like what you thought. Done well, the smallest bit of comprehension only heightens the despair, the draw to insanity, when the rest proves unobtainable.
In a game like D&D where pretty much everything has stats, I think there is something to be said for making the rules not work right. Fighting an unspeakable horror? Ask the player to roll a d30 for attacks on occasion for no particular reason. Or give them a new character sheet with some bizarre differences. Or do a little outright lying to the characters about what they perceive. Not enough to tick off the players (best DM judgment required), just put them a bit off balance. Remember some of the very meta low sanity effects in the Eternal Darkness video game? Yeah, that kind of stuff.
Almost incomprehensible can be the horror equivalent of having a word on the tip of your tongue and failing to find it. It is the square with 5 sides: you can comprehend its squareness and its fiveness, but that very recognition makes attempts to grasp the rest worse. Heck, it is recognizing spheres and then seeing the Banach-Tarski paradox demonstrated. It is the glimpse of a human motive, only to find it is nothing like what you thought. Done well, the smallest bit of comprehension only heightens the despair, the draw to insanity, when the rest proves unobtainable.
In a game like D&D where pretty much everything has stats, I think there is something to be said for making the rules not work right. Fighting an unspeakable horror? Ask the player to roll a d30 for attacks on occasion for no particular reason. Or give them a new character sheet with some bizarre differences. Or do a little outright lying to the characters about what they perceive. Not enough to tick off the players (best DM judgment required), just put them a bit off balance. Remember some of the very meta low sanity effects in the Eternal Darkness video game? Yeah, that kind of stuff.
