Babies drop acid, cops play tag, and Brazilian techno rules – 2,048-player GTA 5 roleplayer servers are a trip

gamesradar.com:

"Você quer uma carona?" says the driver of a blacked-out Subaru-like sports car as I approach the road just a few hundred yards from Vespucci Beach's Pleasure Pier. "Eh… I don't speak Portuguese, mate," I say into my headset. Silence follows. I can't tell if it's lag, or if the man is simply trying to untangle my Glasgow accent. Maybe he's contemplating putting one between my eyes in front of the ferris wheel, and speeding off towards the city. I brace myself for the worst. "Ah, Inglês," the man says, after what feels like a very long time. "Okay, do you want a ride?"

I'm back mucking around in GTA 5 roleplay, this time on one of open-source multiplayer mod FiveM (opens in new tab)'s surprisingly stable fan-made 2,048-player servers. Granted, the population has balanced out somewhere around the 1,600 mark right now, but this is over and above the busiest I've ever seen Los Santos. And it's chaos. Even besides the sheer volume of bodies sprinting past one another up and down the street, careering into lamp posts and fire hydrants in fast cars and Italian scooters – and, always, screaming expletives into their microphones – it is, somehow, more chaotic than I could have imagined. Right now, for example, I'm chatting to a baby who has just informed me in the squeakiest of voices that they've dropped acid. Over my shoulder, a huddle of psychedelic revelers is already well on their way to Nirvana. And beyond them again, a group of Brazilian techno devotees is busting some enthusiastic moves to the tinny bass from an old-school boombox. 

Every time I visit GTA 5's roleplay scene, I leave with my mouth agape and a new story to tell. But as each forum grows in numbers and capacity, these tales seem to be getting weirder and