The Tavern

I'm no good at storytelling.

But I frequently wondered - what happened afterward, when the character I'm playing escaped to the surface with an enormously powerful (or just valuable) item? Presumably the orb loses at least some of its power on the surface, otherwise the protagonist would spend the rest of his short life battling Pandemonium lords. Another issue is what can the now enormously trained character accomplish with it (on the other hand, this is heroic fantasy so there will be many characters like that). Or was he just hired by a mega-wizard to deliver it? Or maybe the Orb gets thrown into a volcano?

A.D.O.M. has a post-mortem story generated based on how you progressed, including how mutated you were.

Douglas Adams, the author of Dilbert, follows the rule where he ends most strips one panel short - when it's still very interesting, and the outcome can be predicted but also quite open-ended. It gets readers' imagination racing.

Another food for thought: imagine you were to design a game which *starts* where DCSS ends - with a "level 27" character emerging from underground with a magical artifact. What kind of game would it be? What kind of mechanics?

I would expect the Dungeon and all of its branches to collapse and cease existing, together with anything and anyone in it.

With the power of the Orb, the PC is now strong enough to change a planet forever. The PC is now the terrain generator in Dwarf Fortress.

Elvin Atombender is displeased.

So we're just gonna let that one slide?

Oops, should be Scott Adams. Douglas Adams wrote Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy. He was poor man's Robert Sheckley.