I have been trying to make a custom neighborhood that starts out empty of townies and of the stealth Pets and Seasons hoods. I installed the various hacks such as notownieregen and antiredundancy to limit the number of characters. I also renamed the NeighborhoodTemplates folders under Pets and Seasons program files so they would not load, and when I first started the new neighborhood, the "Creating Pets" and "Creating Weather" messages did not show up, as I intended. However, I looked in SimPE (I'm a complete newbie to it) and it appears that whatever I did worked too well; the Sim Browser for the neighborhood doesn't show any Sims at all, not even the Grim Reaper. The only thing I can think of is that I may have screwed up the neighborhood's numbering system; I deleted Strangetown and Veronaville (in-game), and this is listed as N002. The neighborhood I made for my Yeoman Farmer challenge is N004. I've put in a comparison screenshot to show the difference between the N004 (which has the default Pleasantview, Downtown, and Bluewater Village characters) and the new empty N002.

I don't know anything about Simpe but maybe do a test household and try and kill them off and see if the grim reaper appears and if he does you know you haven't done anything wrong and if he doesn't then i am afraid i can't help you.

I did you suggested and created a couple of Sims in the new neighborhood, then moved them into a house and played for a bit. An error message appeared; I forgot what it said, though (I had Boolprop active; that might have been the reason). After a while, a paper boy, garden club member and matchmaker showed up, and I did as you suggested and (after saving) messed with motives to make the Social Bunny and Grim Reaper appear. I checked SimPE and they're all present now. I guess I just needed to play a bit and let the game spawn them. Thank you for the suggestion, Peachy!

Your welcome