[Mavs00]

Figured it out, Thanks Marco (I took the link out, as the error code is now gone).

I'll post results for anyone with a similar issue. It's easier than I thought, took a different approach though. First, I took the basic code from the this posted -TEMPLATE-

<?php  

// GO TO FORUM DIR  
chdir('./forums'); <-- Removed (step 1)

// STANDARD VBULLETIN STUFF  
define('NO_REGISTER_GLOBALS', 1);  
define('THIS_SCRIPT', 'script_name'); 
require_once('./global.php');  

// GENERIC_SHELL VARS  
$pagetitle = "for_rules";  <-- Changed to custom name
$HTML = ""; // PIECED TOGETHER IN SCRIPT  

eval('$HTML = "' . fetch_template('for_rules') . '";');  <-- Changed to custom name

$navbits = array();  
$navbits[$parent] = 'Forum Rules';  

$navbits = construct_navbits($navbits);  
eval('$navbar = "' . fetch_template('navbar') . '";');  
eval('print_output("' . fetch_template('GENERIC_SHELL') . '");');

?>

First I removed the {chdir('./forums');} line as Marcho suggested and than changed the other highlighted section to my custom name. Then I saved the file as rules.php in my root forum directory (if you do not save it there any images called on by your vbulletin main.css get lost)

Then I went into vBulletin admin panel;

Styles & Templates --> Style Manager --> Template Options (Add New Template)

and then created a basic html table;

<table width="675" border="1" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="0" bordercolor="665714">
  <tr>
    <td bgcolor="#797b56">
<div align="center"><font color="#FFFFFF" size="3" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong>ADKHighPeaks 
        Forum Rules</strong></font></div></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td bgcolor="#edebd4"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Added my own bogus text</font></td>
  </tr>
</table>

Then saved it as for_rules

That gave me -THIS- , which is exactly what I was looking for.