link (http://www.openurls.org/)
It's been a while but I could dredge up some stuff. What does your friend need to know?
I ran Rogue Trader for 8 months. Do you need in character stories, things to watch out for, etc?
A few things -
First, make it clear what sources you are using from 40K. 40K, being 30 years old, has contradictory canon. I told my players to put their Minis codexes away and that only official FFG material counted.
Second, *only* use alternate careers, gear and other stuff from the Rogue Trader line. Stuff from Dark Heresy can wack your game out, like when I let the Astropath in my game take a Psyker alternate advance scheme and he turned into a blind Mace Windu.
The space combat can be cumbersome. Make sure to review the space combat rules.
Use only the ships out of the book. Also look at the rules for hit and runs, they were murder on NPC enemies. Make sure to forbid any archaeotech or xenotech components for ships.
Keep a tight rein on acquisition rolls, or else the crew will outfit themselves with the absolutely best gear as soon as they can. You may even want to limit the quality of master crafted items to be only available at places like Forge worlds.
Our group talked, briefly, about playing Rogue Trader. I and one other guy (the guy who owned the book) were all for it... but we had a hard time pitching what the actual play would be like... what we would be doing. I sort of envision it as being a bit like TOS Star Trek... with away teams, weird planets/aliens, diplomacy and conspiracies both on-board and off... 'Wagon Train in space' as Star Trek was originally pitched. But I'm not sure how on the mark I am. I've played/run a bit of Dark Heresy and totally grok that... not so much Rogue Trader though.
Either way, the others balked at it because they knew nothing of the 40K universe and opted for Shadowrun instead (and because one guy though it sounded 'too dark').
Welcome to theRPGsite, Jred!
The way we interpreted Rogue Trader was as "mirror universe Star Trek". Go forth, find new life and new civilisations, and destroy or subvert them in the name of the Emperor. Prime Directive? What's a Prime Directive?