OKay, I can't remember if this has been done or not before... [if it has, someone please point me in that direction]... but here's something I want to discuss/generate ideas about:
Many people agree that there needs to be some form of chaos in the game, this is good because:
A) Each game will turn out differently from the previous one, making replayability high,
B) Players have changing circumstances they must react to as the game goes on, keeping their focus and interest in the current game.
C) It keeps players who aren't as good motivated to keep playing, as there is still some chance they can pull off a victory.
However many people do NOT like chaos in the game, because of the following:
A) They believe that the better player should generally win the game, randomness defeating a good player is a bad thing.
B) They want the security that the strategy they have come up with for the game will not be defeated by a random factor, only by an opposing strategy.
So as a result, dice are both overused and demonized.
But there ARE games where a great deal of chaos is included in the game... without any actual "chance" factors.
An example would be Strategy War (a variant of the card game War), in which each player has half the cards (i.e. the red cards vs. the black cards) and chooses which card to play each turn. That basically boils down to a complex game of Rock-Scissors-Paper.
Abstract games manage it sometimes, like Chess and Chinese Checkers, where the chaos comes from the interaction of your pieces with the (theoretically) unpredictable moves your opponents make.
A better example IMHO is The Amazing Labyrinth, mentioned elsewhere in this forum, in which all of the maze pieces are set up on the board and every turn one player shifts a row of pieces, completely redrawing the maze in the process. The guaranteed chaos comes from the rule that the only restriction on the player's shift is he cannot simply reverse the previous shift.
Many would argue that there is NO chance involved in Chess, Chinese Checkers, Strategy War, and The Amazing Labyrinth (although there are other chance elements in The Amazing Labyrinth). However, all of these games SIMULATE the desired chaos very well...
What other ways can we come up with to create or simulate chaos? What has been done already?
I'll throw in a combat/movement mechanic here that I really admired from a friend's homemade RPG, which he may have ripped off from another person.
He took apart three decks of cards, and put one ace, two twos, three threes, etc. all the way up to ten tens into a new "initiative" deck. This deck was then used to measure the speed of combatants and their actions. Each character had a "speed" rating based on his dexterity, the weapon he was using, and some other factors. To start a battle, the deck was shuffled, and then cards revealed one at a time from the top. Whenever your Speed rating came up, your character was entitled to make an action of some sort (move, attack, whatever). Thus characters with high Speed ratings could quite realistically move faster and do more than characters with low Speed ratings... If someone somehow acquired a Speed rating higher than 10, say for example 14, they simply moved on 10s AND 4s. When the deck ran out, it was reshuffled and started again.
The chaos of the system was that the cards were in random order, unlike the similar Impulse system of Star Fleet Battles. You never knew when your actions were going to come up in the deck... so you had to pay attention to the situation and take advantage of opportunities that came up, and take risks based on how likely you thought you were going to be able to move again before your opponent was.
There were also things that could affect the speed of characters during the combat.. injuries, fatigue could reduce it, magic could increase or reduce it, changing weapons or being disarmed mid fight, etc...