Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a growing desire to take a day and futz about with my various RPG projects. I mentioned this to a few of my friends, who looked at me quizzically. They were unfamiliar with the term “futz about” (or the alternative usage, “futz around”).
The Free Dictionary gives two definitions:
- To engage in aimless recreation or frivolous time-wasting; to fool around.
- To play or tinker with something.
It’s the second definition I’m thinking of. I don’t want to work on a particular campaign. That implies structure, coming up with lists, and then crossing things off them. It implies getting things done, making progress, etc.
I don’t want to do that.
- I want to futz.
- I want to jot new entries into my campaign bullet journal.
- I want to play with Worldographer and build out a map.
- I want to brainstorm ideas for hex occupants.
- I want to spend an hour browsing for new battle maps I can use in Roll20.
- I want to scroll through Pinterest, looking for inspirational art.
- I want to setup and organize my various digital art, token, and map collections
This is the sort of thing I used to do all of the time when I was younger, but as a middle-aged parent with an active teenager and a second kid in college, this sort of unstructured time is hard to come by. With the holiday break coming up, I’m hoping to do exactly this. I’ve got lots of stuff to futz with – prepping for my Cyberpunk RED campaign over at Lair of Secrets, pulling together ideas for a Mutant Crawl Classics one-shot I want to run at MEPACon, and contemplating mods and race tracks for Gaslands Refueled.
So, I’m going to take some time, futz about, and see how it goes. Will it be productive? Will it accomplish what I want?
Who cares? I’m futzing.