I am a chess player. In mid-June, I will conclude my three-year tenure as my high school's chess club's president and the chess team captain for both years of its existence. Chess seems to be feared by those who don't play it because of it's complicated rules. I have no idea what rules those are. Until the highest levels of play, chess only requires you to know a few rules beyond how the pieces move. For example, I know what the Fifty Move Rule is, but I do not ever expect to play a game that ends in a draw due to no captures or pawn moves in the past fifty moves.
Chess is viewed as a game that can only be played well by smart people. That is completely untrue. While I certainly am very intelligent, chess doesn't necessarily require that. In order to be good at chess, you need only to be able to plan out your moves and predict the opponent's moves. Those abilities do not require intellect, they require patience and experience.
Chess is not a game that is complicated because of its rules. The reason why it is complicated is because it is an extended mind game with the opponent. A game between two equally-skilled defensively-focused players could easily go on for weeks without a time limit or a blunder. Why is this? It is because they would be predicting each other's moves and responding to them while not risking an exchange of material. However, between two offensively-oriented players of my skill level, we would likely end up at a draw due to insufficient material for a checkmate. Why is this? Because we'd be predicting each other's moves and exchanging material quite often. For this reason, Bruce Lee's advice of "be water, my friend" applies to chess as much as it applies to martial arts: you should be fluid enough to switch between offensive and defensive strategies so as to avoid both stagnation (likely leading to a draw by agreement or repetition) and excessively fast play (likely leading to a draw by insufficient material for checkmate), but you should also be able to crash down on and destroy the opponent whenever the opportunity presents itself.
In summary, I believe that the reputation of chess has intimidated many people away from it. Therefore, I think that if you don't know how to play chess, you should learn how and see if you enjoy it, and if you do know how but haven't played in a long time, you should find somebody to play with and see if you enjoy with. You don't even have to be good at it: I'm an absolutely terrible chess player (although I probably better than the vast majority) and I love the game.