I'm confused as to how acting against other gods in secret is not intrigue.
I had to choose between a blank slate character that purely focused on min-max or one with some actual goals. I mistakenly chose the latter and thus tried playing a character who wanted to preserve the sanctity of the concepts of life and death.
No, that's not mistakenly, that's a good thing. Your mistake was not making preparations for counter-attacks, getting allies or responding to attempts to open a dialogue. One god has a hard time beating more than one god. As crazyabe himself pointed out, Zenrach was a very good potential ally, a fellow Death-God, that you completely ignored, that could have been willing to help you out if you just reached out, and like, rescue you from your prison for example.
In addition, as odd as it might seem, Frami may have been a good ally as well for protecting the sanctity of Life and Death. I doubt he approves of necromancy.
Killing the gods when they went inactive was simulating a "their time has come" kind of deal and killing the necromancers was to stop them from defiling the sanctity and importance of life and death. Meddling in the affairs of other gods was necessary to remain in character, to actually have a character.
This is all fine. But don't be surprised if other gods act against you for doing that. It's like how there was the potential for Frami to act against me because I'm spreading technology everywhere. I fully expected him to do so at some point, but fortunately he seems more "passively anti-technology" than "aggressively anti-technology"
It's a recurring theme. The more I stick to secret actions and the more I min-max, the more enjoyable it ends up being for me and the less danger I put myself in. It's when I roleplay that everything goes to shit.
Alternatively, don't be an idiot. You can roleplay, and not lose. The key is social interaction, i.e. preventing other gods from dogpiling you. This is a group game. The reason I got away with a "slap on the wrist" is because I actually engaged with those wanting to punish me and did some stuff together in private.
I tried keeping Eid (YG2 edition) neutral for a while but then some gods started messing with my race. Everyone remembers how that turned out.
I don't actually. Could you give me a refresher please?
New Malakath's tone was as monotone and emotionless as I could make it, but the problem was that I did a lot of stuff in public. I survived the fallout and once I switched to mostly secret actions, everything was actually going very well. Heck, I managed to avoid starting another feud with Stirk's character entirely (I still can't believe I managed that) and Rolep's character's strange antipathy to mine didn't result in hostile action like it usually does. I finally started enjoying myself and working on my projects in peace and quiet was fun, but that's when the game ended.
I still don't remember anything about this one. Your character's aren't very memorable for me for some reason.
YG4 was going according to plan. I built up a large worshipper base which got me a lot of Essence which allowed me to indulge in my favourite bit of YG - projects. Got an afterlife set up, started building artifacts I was proud of, then I had to do character-building stuff. I even picked the least-reviled Death archetype of Balance Guardian and that still wasn't enough. I think this time around I'll stick to self-improvement rather than roleplay. It was fun when I did it as New Malakath and it was fun while I was doing it as Death, I might as well stick to it exclusively now.
Roleplay is supposed to be fun. If you're not enjoying it, then try a different style until you find something you like.