Well, you could try rotational play. In one of my saves, before I started using mods, I would delete all existing townies and families and I started with my own families and rotated through them. However, you could also just create and fill some houses with your own creations and play them randomly and grow them. PC does offer some advantages in a game like this but you can pull it off without mods on a console by just getting rid of the premade townies. They just don't have much to offer. Some of the preloaded families are actually fun to play with. I like the Fyres for example and the BFFs and the Pancakes even.
In my saves, I use a number of mods to do things I am too lazy to do LOL. NPCC, for example, allows you to direct which jobs townies fill. MCCC allows me to pull townies from my library only so my library only has sims I want in my game. I have it nit set not to generate random townies. It doesn't mean you can't remake them to your own liking without it though. Build some nice houses etc or use the gallery to download non-cc homes, venues, etc and you can make your own stories very nicely without any mods at all. If anything, integrate the townies into your stories!
