Perhaps not rules per se, but...
...Aristotle tried to establish something of a framework in The Poetics. It's a work that most serious dramatists...well, take seriously. As Tom says, there are elements to storytelling (powerful storytelling, that is) that are so deeply grounded in humanity that they go a long way toward transcending culture. Aristotle's work was one of the first (that we know of) that tried to identify some of those elements.