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

Chairman H. Holzschliff, known as "The Glue Spine", at the annual assembly. Photo: archive.

The Rip-Off

The so-called Honourable Society for the Preservation of Fixed Book Prices 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 stamp on the page edge is enough to void the price fixing — 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 rotary press and stamp the official defect mark onto the citation.

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 seat holds two stations and switches between two tabs. No role gets cut — that would break the chain.

From the Picture Archive

Prologue · Antiquarian bookshop "The Last Copy", 11:41 pm
Act 2 · Colophon 7, shut down four years ago
Act 3 · Level minus two, the only cold place tonight

Operation Hardcover

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