Thomas Shey
Legend
The pursuit of balance in various forms was important to the Perrin Conventions, on which RuneQuest was built, and Wayne Shawn’s house rules for Superhero 2044, which inspired Champions, and a bunch of Dave Harvgrave’s house rules collected in Arduin Grimoires, and a bunch of others before we even get out of the 1970s. Lots of people never cared much about balance; others always cared a lot about it.
I was being conservative in that by the 80's it was a common topic in general, while earlier it might have been more--isolated?