So, I have a friend who can't make my EotE sessions, but they still want to be involved somehow.

So the idea we came up with is that they play a 'behind the scenes villain'. Think along the lines of say Emperor Palpatine or Grand Admiral Thrawn type of character, where they plan, organise and authorise operations rather than be in the field, boots on the ground all the time. (They do do that, but rarely when compared to them... Machinationing... I sure that's a word.)

So my thoughts on that were, maybe make it similar to Imperial Assault, where the Villain gets a 'class' and certain upgrades they can take by spending exp in the same way players do. Additionally, to stop the whole 'I send everything to attack the players' thoughts, I have two interlinked ideas.

1) Villain gets (relatively) limited resources, which could get upgrade through exp expenditure.

2) I'll give the Villain player 'intelligence reports' loosely detailing things that have happened (not just player activity) so they have to split their resources among maybe 4 or 5 hotpots. This will obviously have effects on the players when they play (more imperial pressure in X, Y and Z systems).

Those are my thoughts so far

Thoughts, ideas and feedback are 100% welcome!!

Probably option two and handle the character as a largely narrative thing. I find that getting too crunchy with the details can be detrimental but if there’s one thing I know, a player can be far more cruel and cunning a villain then any adversity a GM can make. They usually aren’t concerned with playing fair, but are uniquely gifted to act in a way advantageous to that characters perspective.

key thing is is to have multiple concerns for that NPC. They might ultimately be the adversary of the PCs but they have their own schemes to enact and goals to seek out that might ripple down. This is more advantageous if it they have other political entities to tangle with, the ISB for example is the fantastic example of a political adversary; they look to constantly test the loyalty of imps while digging out any rats. Pretty compelling.

If you took the XP factor out of option 1 - I think you're on to something.

...

I just think that the XP itself would be pretty awful to try and manage/maintain/balance. Keep his resources more to thematics. If he wants more troops, he'll have to make appeals to the higher ups and that sort of thing. (if you have to, take a page from Age of Rebellion and use that Duty mechanic ... just imperial)

Another STRONG suggestion would be making him NOT be the primary antagonist. You could have is sorta structured as such ...
- The Players are the merry band of scallywags doing their thing
- The remote player could probably be a Governor or Moff. Someone the empire put in charge of the region that the players are screwing up in.
- Then you have the actual BBEG, which could be a Hutt that isn't friends with the Empire.

The main reason is that if the absentee player only has to deal with the party, it'll be too easy and adversarial. If, however, the player has to deal with both the players (a small but lethal thorn) and the BBEG (a big problem they have to address), there's enough independence to cause chaos AND to allow all the players to start leveraging the different parties against each other.