“In Chess, both sides have the same OoB and the same terrain. Nothing is further from the truth in ASL. Therefore, chessclocks would inevitably fail in the task envisioned for them.”
That’s like saying you can’t determine victory in ASL for lack of symmetry in OoB and terrain, but we do. How? Playtesting ahead of time to find a “fair” metric. Just like we “test” scenarios to calibrate victory conditions, we could test to arrive at “fair time per side.” It’s easy to do. Just have each pair of testers report their time per side. Designers/developers could then calculate the average of those times to arrive at a benchmark “fair time” for each side. This would account for variations in OoB and terrain, and be no better or worse than the current process for trying to make scenario victory conditions fair. It’s all based on testing and the idea that the truth of a statistic is borne out over many trials.
Designers/developers could then implement VC penalties for exceeding fair time. A slight breach could be minor penalty, for example lose one VP. A major breach could carry a heavier penalty.
As for enjoyment, excessively slow play is an oft cited detractor. With respect to tourneys, I’ve had experienced players tell me that if they see a certain name on the roster they drop out because that player is too slow. I myself have been scolded by a future opponent for taking too long. In that case, I had to explain that I could only progress as fast as my opponent would allow.
Finally, tapping a chess clock is no more difficult than flipping a turn marker – easy to do. We might not be ready to have an entire tourney running on chess clocks, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a “chess clock mini” in which some tourney goers could participate to test/display the concept.