What do you mean by the "back end"?
Well, not necessarily the whole thing in HTML5, but that's also an option. ASP, Java, Python, there are many options when it comes to web development. As a game, KoDP is eminently suitable for this kind of environment: beneath the UI layer, there is nothing that runs in infinite loop. All gameplay calculations are done on a per-turn basis, and the memory footprint is quite reasonable by today's web-app standard. You have a number of options to the structure, but you could conceivably run the whole thing on client-side.
Of course, the more you keep on server-side, the more control you'll have, but it would also require a robust server to work with. The plus side is that you could continuously gather gameplay data and tweak the gameplay -- in effect, you could make KoDP more dynamic than it had ever been. You may periodically introduce new content or feature, tweak the game balance, possibly even making divine interventions... the possibility is endless!
You could also link the app to an online community -- automate screenshot/history sharing. Maybe as a facebook app. You may even link the history to a Twitter account, so that you could actually do a LP through tweets. More community, more buzz, more interest -- isn't this what you've always wanted?
Of course, the beauty of web-apps is that you don't have to do all this at once. Iterative development and perpetual beta is the name of the game.
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