So I'm new to the L5R universe and I use the wiki for reference however with the timeline filled with huge world changing events, when can I set a small, clan focused game but still include events such as the second festering pit or the exile of the spider clan. I'm currently GMing the latest edition of the game (meaning it includes the Spider and Mantis as clans and has the Iweko imperial line).

Go for the Age of exploration, it has all you are asking for.

But the age of exploration finishes in the breaking of the seals and the start of the Empire in Exile right? so it's a period of 27 years where most of the big events happened in the colonies, and it was business as usual at home?

But the age of exploration finishes in the breaking of the seals and the start of the Empire in Exile right? so it's a period of 27 years where most of the big events happened in the colonies, and it was business as usual at home?

Now, that is the Age of Conquest. The Age of exploration is from the end of the Destroyer War to the start of the Age of Conquest, which starts with the new Second City governor.

Nice thing about the RPG? Well, any RPG...

Your table is your own alternate dimension of Rokugan.

Nothing canon is necessary. Anything noncanon could be said to have existed for as long as you want it to have existed.

If you want to shuffle around the timeline so that certain events happened in different orders, by all means you are free to do that.

Hey, you can create a setting where there never were any Kami... or the Hantei never fell... Or another kami took the thorne... Or there have always been 12 Great Clans... or only 4... you can have a setting where technology advanced and samurai tend to carry flintlock pistols by their side and duels usually take place using those and there are train lines crisscrossing all across Rokugan... You can have a Rokugan where Naga and Ratlings and Goblins are all considered basic peasant-class citizens and can be found working fields and working in every city...

Any change you want to make to the world or the timeline, you are free to make it. Nothing that happens at your table affects any other table, nothing that happens at any other affects yours.

Just sit down with your players, explain to them that this story happens in a Rokugan where such and such events absolutely happened, such and such events are happening right now and such and such events never happened or haven't happened yet.