My sister created a character in Celadon, but other than that, I only have my mayors in my towns and plan on keeping it that way. Other people just take up space my towns can't afford to lose, they are cramped as it is.
I have three players right now and am not planning on getting a fourth one (due to a lack of space). I actually only wanted two, but then my little brother wanted me to make him a character, too, yet he never plays on it.
Four at the moment, I like to use lots of patterns and the extra storage is nice. I plan to keep four but will be deleting an alt soon to plot reset. I'll add another alt when I'm done.
I have four players in my town. 1 is me; 1 is my little sister (who barely plays); 1 is a mule to hold all of the path patterns I have; and the other is the plot reset mule so I can manipulate where villagers move in.
I have three for now. Gena is my mayor, Roy is storage, and Basil is turnips and some storage. The other two also hold patterns. I'm planing on making a fourth later after I'm done with plot resetting, so that'll be a while. I'm also planning on fully-decorating the alternate character's houses. Roy will head the southern branch of our government and have another town hall, and Basil will have a hotel.