Maybe you have never heard of the ethnies Batak Pakpak from the Pakpak Bharat district and Dairi district in North Sumatra province. Besides having natural beauty that enriches Indonesia Travel, the Batak Pakpak ethnies also have unique traditional game art.

This game may exist all over the world, but children in Medan call it broken plates.

Even though the name of the dish broke, it didn't mean the players broke the dish. Indeed, there is something that is destroyed, namely the arrangement of small thin objects, such as coconut shell fragments, floor ceramics, asbestos, bottle caps, or others. That's what we will call plates.

In the Pakpak community, there are traditional games that are proven to be able to increase the agility of body movements, teamwork, emotional control, body health and stimulate thinking. This game is known as "Tableware"

Uniquely there is no age limit to participate in this game. Who wants and dares to play. Of course by complying with fixed and additional regulations. Permanent regulation is a rule that has been passed down through the game since this time, such as not being able to hold the ball by hand for the team that is playing. Additional rules are more to the approval of the rules on both sides, for example not being able to kick the ball.

Cracked dishes require a ball made of paper with small stones in the interior. Besides that, the stones of the flat surface are needed so that they can be arranged neatly. According to the elders of the Pakpak community, the game was cracked using plates made of glass, but due to several factors, it was replaced with stones. The number of stones is usually adjusted to the agreement between the two sides.

The total number of participants must be even so that they can be divided equally into two groups. 2 The group leader is chosen based on his abilities which are considered to be great playing broken dishes. These two leaders will choose their group members.

The systematics of the game is unique, the two groups first compile the whole stone. Then proceed with determining which groups will play as attackers (njahat) and those who are attacked (burju).

The burju group threw the ball until the stones that were arranged again fell apart. And the task is to re-arrange the stones as before, while avoiding the body being hit by throwing balls from evil groups.

The njahat group has the duty to keep the stones from being finished rearranged by the burju group. The njahat group is also tasked with attacking the burju group by throwing the ball so that it is about the burju group.

If all the Burju groups are hit by the ball before the whole rock is arranged, the game is over and the bad group becomes the winner. Conversely, if all the stones are composed by the Burju group then those who are the winners.

In the cracked game there are several terms in the Pakpak language:

Geddal:

if the attacker (njahat) is too strong to throw the ball so that the party attacked (burju) is in pain.

Eta Lojang:

The Burju group has to run and try to avoid being hit by the ball from a bad group if one of the members manages to make a neatly arranged rock back in disarray.

Sidung:

if the party being attacked is ready to arrange the whole stone without any member being killed.

Kenna:

Members who are subject to the ball may not play again.

This game is still often found in several villages in Dairi Regency and Pakpak Bharat District, the erosion of local culture due to globalization does not seem to affect the traditional game of this Pakpak.