One of my players whose character is a Dwarf of Durin's Folk wants to bring a pair of binoculars and a magnifying glass as their traveling gear.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. The magnifying glass seems allowable, especially as a dwarf. But I'm not sure about the binoculars. The dwarves did have magnifying eyeglasses of some kind they used when inspecting crystals, and Elrond had a telescope, and binoculars are a continuation of a telescope....but I feel like it's a bit of a stretch? At the very least, it seems like an exceedingly rare item, and one that dwarves in particular wouldn't necessarily have a use for. I'm thinking of allowing it if he can come up with a good enough backstory as to how his character came to be the owner of a set of binoculars. Thoughts?
Another character wants to have his traveling gear be poison darts, so he can knock one of the other players unconscious should his character talk too much. Which is also like...ok well there is definitely herb lore in Middle Earth, and I'm sure there's some kind of herb that would do that kind of thing, and darts also aren't that complicated technologically speaking. But we haven't even started and they are already pushing the bounds of "canon" if you will.
How do you all make decisions about technology-based items? Tolkien himself was very anti-industrialization of course, but I'm trying to figure out where that fuzzy line is.