IVAN is HILARIOUS. I was once carrying a wand of polymorph, and was super happy that I had just found a pickaxe. now I can break down a few walls and get to the really far stairs more easily. So what do I do? I break down a room's wall, of course! Except on the other side was a lantern hanging from the wall, which fell to the ground, and broke, and the oil ignited, and there was fire all over. I catch on fire, and my stuff catches on fire! I was pretty hurt. One of the things that catches on fire is the wand of polymorph, which breaks and turns me into a wounded bunny or hedgehog or whatever it was. My stuff continues burning and exploding, but after a while I am still alive... barely! I am badly burned, almost dead, can't wield or wear anything due to the lack of arms and torso, BUT I'M ALIVE! Let us explore the depths of the dunge... oh, a magpie! It pecks me, and I die.
Another time I was travelling happily along the second (dwarven) dungeon. Now, in this game, dwarves tend to have the "kamikaze" adjective appended to them, and are quite fond of explosions. Particularly, they like landmines. Still, I had a ring of fire protection, so I felt relatively safe, despite not having the favour of any gods. I was walking around searching every couple of steps to make sure I wasn't going to step on anything when suddenly, I step on a landmine. My character is engulfed in a MASSIVE explosion, and once again, stuff starts breaking and catching on fire. I think the first explosion took away one of my arms, and damaged me to the brink of oblivion. Then my potions heat up and start exploding, meaning nothing's gonna heal me, then my food, then my equipment, my cape... everything is burning around me. I shakily read the messages from the log, one by one. Each announces a new item that overheated and burned or exploded, taking another piece of my already charred flesh with it. My HP is dropping steadily, message by message... there goes my potion of troll blood... my cape... the wand of fireballs explodes, taking one of my legs, then a wand of door creation. I am now down to two limbs (one hand, one arm)... then go my boots... At this point I'm not even looking at the fire and explosions engulfing me, I'm just reading the messages and pressing space very very carefully. I fully expect to die as I press space for the last time... and nothing happens! I survived! Somehow, with half my limbs, the tatters of my previous equipment hanging from my body, and no HP to spare. I'm hanging by a thread, but by the glory of Valpurus, I am still alive! I look around, and blink groggily. What is that? It looks like I'm surrounded by doors... it looks safe... I fall asleep, to regain my health. I wake up with a healthy appetite, ready to meet the dungeon with my one arm and one leg. I push open a door. It doesn't open. I push open another door. It doesn't open. Hm. I push them all, but nothing happens. I try to kick it, but remember I'm missing one leg. Crap. My food... I look around, but no food has survived the raging inferno. Crap. I can't pray, because no god likes me enough to give me new limbs, I can't open the magical doors, and they simply won't break down with my feeble attempts at one-leg kicking. Days later, that was the end of me, starving, after having survived one of the massivest explosions ever generator by dwarf and man...
So, those are the kinds of stories you might expect if you play IVAN enough
It's a really nice game, and you can lose limbs, get new limbs, and all sorts of interesting interactions can happen
IVAN doesn't have character levels, so the more you use something, the better you get at it. That's why some people use banana peels to train their flails skills - they don't do any damage, so you can hit monsters all you want
I'm not particularly fond of Nethack or ADOM. You might want to look at Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Plenty of variety, and VERY tactical play. Plus, whereas in nethack you level your skills like, once in a lifetime or two, in Dungeon Crawl they level up as you use them. Despite the more organic levelling of skills, you also level up the character, get more hitpoints, etc. I really like this one.
Cataclysm is also awesome.