tableroom

Buchmafia Series: Case 01 · Operation Hardcover

DE

Independent · Published daily except Sundays

The Bockenheim Gazette

A cooperative online escape game in comic-noir style, for 2 to 4 players

Frankfurt am Main Today's edition Playtime: 90 min. Cover price: free

Book price-fixing dispute escalates

35 Marks for Bound Air: The Trust's Great Swindle

Thick covers, cheap paper, and steep prices: how a powerful cartel controls the book trade — and which clause might just bring it down.

Background report by Ansgar Pleite · Frankfurt am Main

Horst Holzschliff, chairman of the Price-Fixing Trust, known as "The Glueback", at the annual assembly. Photo: archive.

The Rip-Off

The so-called Honourable Society for the Preservation of Fixed Book Prices, the Price-Fixing Trust for short, runs the book trade with an iron fist. Play by their rules or vanish from every trade directory — and from the market, practically overnight.

Thirty-five marks is what the cartel charges for a standard hardcover. On the shelf the books look hefty, but the secret is simple: chemically bulked cheap paper that puffs up the spine. Production costs barely more than a mark. Affordable paperbacks for everyone? The Trust drove those off the shelves years ago, systematically.

Yet the officials left a fateful exception standing in their own regulation:

"Books with physical defects are exempt from price fixing. Price at the retailer's discretion." § 14 Abs. 3

A single "defective copy" stamp on the page edge is enough, and the retailer is free to set the price — perfectly legally. For years, nobody looked closely. Until now.

From the Back Room

Four roles, up to four screens, one night.

For the plan to work, you'll need real teamwork:

Everyone at their own screen: phone, tablet, or laptop. Don't peek at each other's displays — the fun comes from nobody holding all the information alone.

Talk to each other: use Discord, the phone, or sit down at the same table. You have to describe to one another what you see in front of you.

Distributed tools: while you follow the cutscenes together, every puzzle hands each of you different documents and machine controls.

Nobody can crack this case alone. Whoever runs the switches doesn't have the wiring diagram. Whoever cracks the code can't enter it themselves. Only by trading what you see does the picture come together.

The Job

The operation plan, in four steps:

1. Through the back door of an antiquarian bookshop at night, past the guard, without tripping the silent alarm.

2. Start up a two-hundred-metre printing press and print an entire run bearing the official defect stamp.

3. Crack the directors' vault by ear and secure the sheet with the production costs.

4. Out of the city before sunrise — with the evidence in the folder and the police radio in your ear.

No registration, no ads. Focus on the heist and don't waste time!

Form H-4 · Backroom Access quadruplicate · pink carbon copy

A — Open a Backroom

You become the host and get a code for the others.

B — Join a Crew

Someone already opened one? Then all you need is the code.

Wanted · Four Decommissioned Specialists

With two or three players, one of you plays two roles and switches back and forth between them during the game. No role is dropped, because every one is needed.

From the Picture Archive

Location 1 · Antiquarian bookshop "The Last Copy", 11:41 pm
Location 2 · Colophon 7, the Trust's print works
Location 3 · Colophon 7, the corridor to the archive

Operation Hardcover

paypal kofi bmac