As a soon-to-become-legal-professional (when law school is done) I do have a few opinions on the matter. Mind you, these are my opinions, take them for what they are worth...
Based on how you phrase your question you really ask: what are the limits to someone's ownership of a rule, where does it end?
Well, to be frank, the ownership does not even begin. Rules (as such) cannot be owned. A rule is an idea. The only way one can own an idea is by claiming a patent. With the exception of the U.S., rules of games are excluded from patent protection all around the globe. Everyone is free to express the rules of the game chess.
What one could claim ownership (the copyright) to is the way one has expressed an idea.
A claim of copyright is only valid if the expression is "original". The concept of originality is, unfortunately, not the same in all nations. Europe has it's version, the U.S. another and the U.K. still a slightly different one. The former European colonies have imported European copyright notions, the same goes for the former eastern-block. To make matters worse, there are some (in some cases quite subtle) differences between the European nations concepts of originality.
A very basic definition of originality is: an expression is original if it's the result of a human beings own personal, independent, creation.
So, based on this very basic definition, a description of a games rule, that is the result of someone's own, personal and independent creation, is copyright protected.
There are a few problems here. What is really meant by personal, by independent and by creation? It's here the laws of Europe, the U.S. and the U.K. begins to differ. In Europe courts, particularly in Scandinavia, use a help rule called "the double-creation criteria" => A expression is not original if the possibility of independent double-creation is not minimal.
That is, if you have reason to suspect that the probability of 10 (or more) experienced roleplayers, who all know of the ideas that makes up a given RPG, could independently produce the same or very similar expressions of a given rule are more than minimal (say more than 10% probability) then those expressions would not be original, and thus would lack copyright protection.
So to answer your question. In my opinion a description of a rule of a game is, at best, protected against direct copying. There is no protection against adaptations or derivative use.
If someone describes a rule with his own words, then it's quite OK.
Finally, try to avoid falling into the trap of assuming that just because a text derives from the ideas presented in another text, it's also a derivative text. The idea is unprotected. It's fair game. You may derive from other peoples ideas - that's one of the fundamental concepts of copyright legislation. Only expressions are protected, not the ideas they contain.
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