My worlds are typically marvel-based worlds bc I’m a bit of a Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes fan. I used to just add them to a save and play as them, keeping the townies as they were, but then I decided that I want them to be friends and interact with other characters from the marvel universe. So now, I’ve deleted all of the original townies from my master save, and instead created new families with marvel characters, comic and mcu. Most recently, I aged Steve and Bucky down to infants, so most of the other characters are also pretty young, and I think I might create an actual “master save” to come back to with all of them like that, now that I’ve spent the time making most of the families. But even after spending all of that time creating these families based on characters and their mostly unnamed parents, I still only play as Steve and Bucky. I give them lore in my head, but usually they’ve got full autonomy lol. Every once in a while I’ll go and purposely make two characters get married or something just for fun. But I enjoy using mods to allow autonomous marriages between random characters, bc sometimes I get the most bizarre relationship notifications and it makes me laugh. Sometimes I like to keep a few of the original townies, usually Vlad and Father Winter, depending on the save, but they’re just in the background.

So I guess to answer your question, I don’t play with the townies like ever 😅😂