How did a random man from New Zealand end up as a #boardgame character in @CMONGames Rising Sun? A thread: 
In March of 2017: @CMONGames launched Rising Sun – an gorgeous area control game designed by @eric_lang. It was a smash success.
Rising Sun features monsters from Japanese mythology you can recruit to join your clan – like these epic Oni 
As the project grew more successful, they unlocked bonus stretch goals to add new monsters – including one for the Kōtahi 
But the Kōtahi isn't a real Japanese Monster! There's ZERO literature or historical references on it. It's actually a Maori word!
Apparently, the designers of Rising Sun must have been doing their primary research on Wikipedia without checking other sources. Here's the wiki entry for Kotahi on the "Legendary Japanese Monsters" wiki list: 
but this was actually only added to Wikipedia in September of 2016 
likely by an actual man from Dannevirke, NZ named Kōtahi-Manawa Bradford, or one of his friends. 
and the IP used to make that edit also edited the Dannevirke wiki page, supporting that theory. 
In short: consult people from the cultures you are basing your #boardgame in, or even better, bring them in as co-designers, developers, or artists. Cultural appropriation aside, it'll prevent you from including fake Wikipedia entries as characters in your game!
Credit to Casey Smith (SwissQueso on BGG) for being the first to point this out boardgamegeek.com/thread/1924167…
Update: I have confirmed this is correct after talking to Kōtahi myself.
I'd also like to tag into this thread @logicwolf – the Japanese BGG user who first asked the question on #boardgamegeek "What is "Kōtahi"?" and led us all down this wonderful internet rabbit hole. 
If you'd like to share this story with non-twitter people, I've also compiled these tweets into a blog post over at: johnbrieger.com/blog/?p=321
