There were plenty of amusements in prior centuries, but let's talk about a portable one which can be used for "vegging out"-like behavior, and is attested to by quite a few period paintings; the cup and ball, or bilboquet.

You've likely seen one -- it simply has a stick with a cup, a small ball or marble, and a string, and you need to get the ball into the cup. It is normally thought of as a child's toy (maybe one given in cheap plastic) but it used to be everywhere; this print from the 1992 book Puzzles Old and New claims 16th century provenance (although it appears from the clothing to be actually 18th). The word does show up in the 1500s so that is perhaps the reason for the confusion but we have more definitive evidence of play from the 18th century onward in Europe; we can point to plenty of pictures of enough elegant people in the midst of play to say it was very widespread. (That last painting was by Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne who lived from 1769 to 1834.)

The more "sophisticated" play with the devices resembled that of fancy yo-yo tricks -- this figure from a 1937 paper gives a pretty good example.

Of course, such idle enthusiasm would not go without condemnation. In the 1700s the authors Diderot and d'Alembert gave stern moral warnings about the immorality of bilboquets; by being a frivolous activity of no purpose (not even gaining money, like gambling), there is nothing but success in something that is intrinsically useless. The bibloquet came to represent a sort of general idleness of the gentry.

A 1713 comedic description notes that

The Bilboquet's repute is such that nothing can increase it: the shops of the most famous perfumers have nothing comparable to the smell of your fame; although raised in a forest, you entertain the greatest city in the world; a look at your wasit, and we are all charmed by your figure; and even the blind would admit that you are nicely turned out.

There are bilboquets attested from other cultures (notably the Inuit, using bone) so this is not purely a European invention, although it is unclear where the device was made independently and where it was the result of passing in the process of foreign trade.

...

Falaky, F., McGinnis, R., & Bloom, R. (2021). Modes of Play in Eighteenth-century France.

Howells, R. (2000). Marivaux's Le Bilboquet (1714): the game as subversive principle: Games in the eighteenth century. Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, (8), 175-178.