The Reckoners feed on negative emotions, particularly fear. This ritual created a conduit to a spiritual realm populated by powerful malicious entities known as the 'Reckoners.' The events surrounding and immediately subsequent to Raven's ritual is known as 'The Reckoning.' On this date, a group of American Indians from various tribes, led by a Sioux shaman known as 'Raven,' performed a ritual in an effort to drive out the European settlers. The history of the Weird West is identical to real-world history, up until July 3, 1863. The canonical, basic setting is referred to as the ' Weird West' due to the juxtaposition of the Western setting with the horrific and fantastical elements of the game. These supplements often provide for adventures set in urban areas such as New Orleans, New York City, or Boston. However, later supplements expanded the in-game adventuring area to include places such as the Deep South, the Mississippi River, Mexico, and the Northeastern United States. The basic rules provide for characters and settings that could be expected to appear in the ' Wild West' genre of movies and pulp fiction, and most of the in-game action is presumed to occur in the wild frontiers of the American West, or in barely-tamed frontier towns like Tombstone, Arizona or Dodge City, Kansas. Deadlands: Reloaded further updates the backstory and advances the canonical starting point to 1879. The second edition of Deadlands uses the updated backstory of 1877 as the canonical starting point.

A later supplement, Tales o' Terror, advances the game's backstory and metaplot ahead one year, to 1877. The canonical year for the first edition of Deadlands is 1876. The game is set in the United States in the last quarter of the 19th century.

Deadlands reloaded character creation