Why does it have a word count? I can't keep my recaps updated the way I like? 

This is not a word limit-- it's a 2048 character limit. DDB wants to be our one stop shop for DMing and is now limiting our note taking to 8 tweets or less.

This is massive enshittification. 

Honestly, I tried to use it briefly, but the system is not designed for campaign logs etc.

So I only use it for reference links, and keep everything in LegendKeeper.  So much better.

I've been a Master tier subscriber for five years and use those text windows heavily for campaign recaps, planning, social contracts for groups, and house rulings. I don't want to just post links to third-party sites. I want continued access to the simple tools I have relied upon for years. I want to focus on running my campaign tonight, not decimating my notes or subscribing to another platform. 

Exactly. No announcement, just a massive unannounced reduction in service. 

I've had the exact same apologetics on my post regarding this issue, e.g. just use a third-party, it wasn't intended for that purpose, etc. 

Are WotC trying to completely tank what's left of the goodwill towards DDB? Got to wonder. 

I've been running a campaign for about a year and I use the "Public Notes" portion os the campaign page in DnD Beyond to post session notes. Recently, it stopped allowing me to save new addition to these public notes, giving me a message of "Public notes cannot exceed 2048 characters." My notes already well exceed this limit and there's never been any problems before. Is this happening to anyone else? is there truly a limit to how much we can enter in Public Notes? Is this a bug that needs to be fixed. Just looking for some insight here. thanks.

Yeah it is very unfortunate. They forget that the key player is the GM.

I was using the space for my recaps, my secret session notes, If they can't support me I will be pulling away from them. 

Same problem here.  DnDBeyond is missing out on a huge revenue opportunity here.  As soon as I noticed the problem I bought an account over at World Anvil, and imported all 150 MB of my game notes over to there.  Literally the only thing that is left to keep me using DnD Beyond are the Character sheets and the modules.  If keeping big beefy notes is really a big problem for them I would have paid more, no big deal, just give me some damn warning.  Cripes.

But if they really want to claim I wasn't using the way it was intended then why did they give me all these awesome tools for embedding images and formatting the text.  There's no need for any of that if the text limit is 2048 chars.  So stupid.

If you are defending this decision, please show me where it is unequivocally stated that using more than 2048 characters wasn’t the intended use of those fields before this week.

Well I have a different opinion.  If we’re going to use analogies I think it’s more like they built a terrible toaster that wasn’t able to do the job it was advertised to do.

No one should reasonably expect campaign notes for any D&D game to be anywhere near less than 2048 characters.  The whole point of D&D is collaborative story telling.  If you provide me with a tool and advertise it as a way to record that story, that’s what I will use it for.

The fact that they did not choose to actually build the tool for that purpose - instead just crapping out a bulletin board API to do it instead, then gaslighting users and telling them, "oh wait, don’t actually use our crap product to make campaign notes," - it’s verging on fraud.  I know it’s actually incompetence, and a lack of awareness of how people actually play D&D, but that doesn’t make it any better.

Instead of DDB (and those who receive income from DDB) defending this decision as necessary to maintain platform stability, they should be asking the question of who this affects and how to make them whole.

Use me as an example: a professional DM who has used this site since 2017 and probably been a Master Tier subscriber since 2019 (Legendary Bundle too). You could say that I have fully embraced DDB and rely heavily on the tools that it has offered me, including text boxes on the campaign page. A word count on one of my campaign pages comes in at 272,000 characters (if you think that is somehow greedy of me, it's 272 kB of data). I am able to use it every week with none of the problems mentioned.

The idea that the existence of power users like me is somehow indicative of a problem, and that the solution to the problem is to curtail my use of this tool with a) no warning and b) by relegating the character number to an amount which would require I drastically change how I prep and DM my campaigns, is, frankly, the worst form of customer service. 

A toaster analogy: it's like if some people like burnt toast, but, in a very rare number of occasions, burning your toast causes your toaster to overheat and need a few minutes to cool down. So, the company that you've paid your Smart Toaster sub to decides to override your toaster settings and set everyone's max toaster level to 1. And then someone's like, "What's the big deal, just use a stovetop as a secondary appliance to finish your toast the way you want."

As an aside, I refer you to Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman's General Theory of Enshittification, posted, let's see, today: The General Theory of Enshittification - Paul Krugman

Quote from SaltyRegwin >>

If you are defending this decision, please show me where it is unequivocally stated that using more than 2048 characters wasn’t the intended use of those fields before this week.

 Not defending them, but show me "unequivocally stated "where that was the intended use of the fields?  

They've never made any claims about what those fields are for.  You can't stake a claim without evidence then demand to be proven wrong, which is what you're doing.  That's a fallacy.

The field is literally called "Public Notes" on a page titled, "My Campaigns". You give me a page to write notes for my campaign, I am going to interpret that as its intended use.  

But no matter, I'm just glad they have acknowledged it was an error and have corrected it.  Thanks LT.

Quote from SaltyRegwin >>

Well I have a different opinion.  If we’re going to use analogies I think it’s more like they built a terrible toaster that wasn’t able to do the job it was advertised to do.

No one should reasonably expect campaign notes for any D&D game to be anywhere near less than 2048 characters.  The whole point of D&D is collaborative story telling.  If you provide me with a tool and advertise it as a way to record that story, that’s what I will use it for.

The fact that they did not choose to actually build the tool for that purpose - instead just crapping out a bulletin board API to do it instead, then gaslighting users and telling them, "oh wait, don’t actually use our crap product to make campaign notes," - it’s verging on fraud.  I know it’s actually incompetence, and a lack of awareness of how people actually play D&D, but that doesn’t make it any better.

 

 
This.