More Words, Deeper Hole

Fate seemed promising to me as a game that had mechanical hooks which got people involved rather than getting in the way, but it never really lived up to that promise until the latest version, Fate Core. (Specifically I got into the beta of the Atomic Robo RPG and ran a few one-shots which all turned out great. There's a writeup of one of them here: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?684170-Atomic-Robo-Action-Accounting!) The Fate Core base system itself should be available as a pay-want-you-want download in a month or so; you might want to check that out.

It avoids the, "Is it an asset? Or a resource?" problem quite nicely, and it has great frameworks for non-combat challenges. It does go the other way though, making every mechanical option really exactly the same. It's not much about tactical choices at all, which rubs some people the wrong way. Mechanically, it's about bidding: just how much do I want to spend to do well on this particular roll / avoid this particular consequence. Pretty much any tactic will work as well as any other (beyond the very basic, "Try to use stats you have a high bonus in") since your effectiveness is based on how many points you choose to spend.

A completely different approach that I've seen people rave about is Apocalypse World and its fantasy spin-off, Dungeon World (which was released under a Creative Commons license so you can find a free download of it easily.) As far as I can tell what makes it cool is that whenever you take an action you only fully succeed on a critical success: more often, actions look like this:

On a roll of < threshold, something bad happens to you (or you simply fail)
On a roll of >= threshold, you succeed but something bad happens as well
On a roll of >= high threshold, you succeed with no sacrifice needed

Often this is phrased like:

Scry spell: You gain a flickering, fragmentary vision of a subject of the GM's choice, lasting for several seconds. Roll the dice:
If you roll < threshold, pick one of the following.
If you roll >= threshold, pick two of the following.
If you roll >= high threshold, pick three.
* The vision is of a target you choose.
* The vision is clear and lasts for several minutes.
* You do not attract the attention of a hostile other-worldly being.

Which seems like a fun way to present choices.