Mainstream discourse in urban planning is in transition, due to shifts from a technical to a communicative perspective, and increased scrutiny and criticism of models and simulations. The cognizance of complexity in urban systems is imposing limitations on modeling. The added benefits of today's data and computational power make simulations harder to validate and understand. Reconciling the movements towards a communicative and exploratory approach as compared to a technical and predictive approach requires new methods for planning process and posits new requirements and functions for simulations. Based on distributed simulation and gaming simulation, the paper presents a framework to support the exploration of simulated and realistic virtual worlds in a participatory fashion, enabling new approaches to urban planning. The development and evaluation of the framework casts simulations in a new perspective and explores the context of use of simulations in planning and design.